- Performance Increases – ClickTracks overnight processing speed is improved multifold through use of a new statistical caching algorithm

- KPI Report – Graph Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) in a timeline for over a dozen metrics and unlimited segments

- Data Dissection Report – Sort cross tab performance statistics for unlimited visitor types and website variables.

I also has had the opportunity to get ClickTracks CEO Joh Marshall’s thoughts on version 6.5:

[Manoj]: How will ClickTracks 6.5 adjust their marketing strategies now that ClickTracks has the ability to focus on large scale websites?

[John]: We are sponsoring the Emetrics Summit this year, for example. You’ll certainly see more of us in the online media too.

[Manoj]: Has the relationship with J.L. Halsey Corporation helped you achieve version 6.5 quicker and more efficiently?

[John]: Yes. We’re able to achieve scale much more easily and we benefit from being part of a larger organization.

[Manoj]: What separates ClickTracks’ product from Omniture’s or WebTrends’

[John]: Ease of implementation, ease of use, shorter time to data that impacts the business.

[Manoj]: What is your favorite part of ClickTracks 6.5?

[John]: The data dissection report. Take a slice through the data, for any segment, and learn something unique in just a few seconds.Like all our reports it’s designed to be understood at a glance of course, but the depth of knowledge you can gain from this is exceptional.

I look forward to seeing the impact ClickTracks 6.5 will make in the enterprise level Web Analytics space.

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Here is some background on the ClickTracks/Kaushik Challenge:

The Challenge
We were recently challenged by the author of Occam’s Razor, Avinash Kaushik, to enable more features in Appetizer. The short story is that we agreed, but you might find the ‘why’ and ‘how’ to be interesting—and get a little view of the less-conformist thinking of ClickTracks’ marketing department.

The Dilemma
We’ve never hid the fact that Appetizer is primarily a learning tool and a very useful ‘taste’ rather than a comprehensive web analytics solution. We measure the success of Appetizer by how many people attend our free classes each month. It’s true. Folks who learn good web analytics practices tend to favor (or buy) ClickTracks’ more powerful products. However, if we enable too many features, Appetizer could conceivably eat into sales of our $19/month Analyzer service or our $295 Analyzer software product.

The Answer
So, like a good web analytics team, we decided to do a test. We’d enable the Site Overview in Appetizer for 90 days. After 90 days we’ll measure. If the growth rate of Analyzer continues uninhibited, and we see a spike in attendance in the online classes (in theory, more future buyers), then the Site Overview remains enabled. We also asked Avinash to teach one of the classes.

Personally I think this is a win/win situation. ClickTracks gets an expert Analyst to teach a class in exchange for the enabling of some extra features in ClickTracks appetizer (which is a bonus for end users).

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So did I. But today I came across a web site analytics program that has the visualization cool factor x 10!

Visitorville uses video game principles to help you more easily visualize your web site traffic statistics. If you’ve ever played SimCity, you’ll recognize the avatar-populated 3D virtual world created by Visitorville. But what’s cool is that each building represents a web page, each bus a search engine and each animated character is a real visitor to your site.

You can watch your live stats and see people “walking” around your site in real time with IP labels attached to them. Each visitor has certain additions that appear with their avatar, depending on their status. For example, repeat visitors wear a halo, paying visitors wear a coin on their head and repeat/paying visitors have both. Your VIP visitors are flown in by virtual helicopter. Each visitor has a “passport” associated that contains 24 pieces of information about them. Clearly, the developers of this program have a LOT of time on their hands.

If you run PPC campaigns, you can even watch Google or Yahoo branded buses drop people off at your buildings (pages)! How cool is that? You can even watch an entire day’s traffic activity fast-forwarded to speeds of up to 1000 x real time. Another great feature is that the service buys you both a stand-alone log analyzer AND a hosted service.

With prices ranging from USD 15 to 170 per month, Visitorville is not cheap. But the fun factor makes it worth a look if you view your site stats on a daily basis. As the reviewer from Wired Mag said: “It’s SimCity for traffic nerds”.

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Kalena Jordan was one of the first search engine optimization experts in Australia and New Zealand and is well known and respected in the industry, particularly in the U.S. Kalena was one of the founders of http://www.SearchEngineCollege.com and is currently Director of Studies and SEO tutor for the online training institution. Kalena is a member of SEO Consultants and has spoken at the popular Search Engine Strategies Conferences. She is also a moderator at the Search Engine Watch Forums and author of the popular Search Light newsletter.

Guests were treated to drinks, food and the musical stylings of Chico Banks and the Candy Lickers – yep, that’s right. There was an additional singer to rev things up (didn’t catch his name though) added after a few songs.

As you can see John and Laura Thieme got up and put it down on the dance floor along with other SES party goers.

Thank you to Dan and John of ClickTracks for a great party!

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Lee Odden is President and Founder of
TopRank Online Marketing, specializing in organic SEO, blog
marketing and online public relations. He’s been cited as a search
marketing expert by publications including U.S. News & World Report and
The Economist and has implemented successful search marketing programs
with top BtoB companies of all sizes. Odden shares his marketing
expertise at Online Marketing Blog offering
daily news, interviews and best practices.

I had the pleasure of speaking at a few DMA conferences at the same time as ClickTracks founder John Marshall and found him to be one of the most enthusiastic evangelists for web analytics in the industry. On top of that he’s really a very good guy.

John and his VP of Marketing, Michael Stebbins took out a few ClickTracks’ freinds for dinner on Tuesday night and it proved to be some of the best conversation. I cannot emphasize enough, the importance of networking after the daytime sessions are over.

Here’s Mike McDonald of WebProNews, Dan Thies of SEO Research Labs, Greg Jarboe of SEO PR and Michael Stebbins from ClickTracks. Missing from the photo is one of Dan’s protoges, the amazing Shirley Tan. Check out my other photos of the Las Vegas Pubcon here.

On Wed I found John Marshall at the ClickTracks booth evangelizing their click fraud tools to an attentive group of conference attendees. After that, he was nice enough to give this little interview about Pubcon. I hope Brett sees this because it’s great feedback about the conference.

I will be posting several other short interviews after my session today about public relations and social media. Just watch my YouTube Channel.

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Lee Odden is President and Founder of
TopRank Online Marketing, specializing in organic SEO, blog
marketing and online public relations. He’s been cited as a search
marketing expert by publications including U.S. News & World Report and
The Economist and has implemented successful search marketing programs
with top BtoB companies of all sizes. Odden shares his marketing
expertise at Online Marketing Blog offering
daily news, interviews and best practices.

These are the company’s entry-level and mid-level web metrics products for small businesses and online marketers. ClickTracks Analyzer will be on sale for $295 (regularly $495) and ClickTracks Optimizer for $795 (regularly $1195) through October 31, 2006. The promo requires no coupon and details are at http://www.clicktracks.com/holidays. (The rest of the information is posted in a release at http://www.clicktracks.com/news.php?id=93)

ClickTracks and its new fellow subsidiaries are offering cross-company discounts. ClickTracks customers are receiving discounts on EmailLabs, Lyris and Hot Banana products. Users of Hot Banana, Lyris or EmailLabs products can get 20% discounts on ClickTracks hosted web analytics products. The company is promising that integrations among the products are due in 6-18 months. Details are posted at http://www.clicktracks.com/smartmarketing. (The rest of the information is posted in a release at http://www.clicktracks.com/news.php?id=95)

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Web Analytics World. Web Analytics is an essential component in developing a successful
online campaign. Help convert visitors into customers by understanding
them.

If you ever get a chance to speak with John you can totally hear the passion in his voice about what he does. Here’s how it went:

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

[John] - I was running a small software company in 1998 (a very web centric marketing company) and we bought a log analyzer product which was the most popular and most expensive product at the time. I hated it; it was very clunky and rigid. It had 2 major problems: firstly, it did not encourage thinking about the website analytically. It was just list of stats, as if the developers had simply written every possible report in the hope the user would find something useful. Of course this made the product intimidating and actually discouraged heavy use. The second was the unnecessary complexity of the data presentation. I recall ranting that I just needed to see where people click on the page, and I can work out the rest – and the light bulb went on. Therefore my origin in the industry was as a small business owner trying to answer: What do people do when they arrive at my website? I realized that no product was doing a good job of answering that question, and therefore a need was going unmet.

[Manoj] – 1998 was a great time to get into the Web Analytics market considering how new the concept was.

[John] – Yes it was, however I would like to clarify that we didn’t actually start ClickTracks until 2000. The original company in 1998 was a different product altogether.

I started to think about the books by Edward Tufte. I am a big fan of what he does, long before ClickTracks and it was at that time I started thinking through his idea of data presentation methods (which he promoted in his book). It was from that I gained the inspiration for the first ClickTracks product.

[Manoj] - What are specific things you and your organization do to help ClickTracks stay a leader in the Web Analytics Industry?

[John] – We practice what we preach by acting as Web Analysts to analyze our clients’ sites as well as our own. We go to a lot of Trade Shows where you’ll usually find me in the booth. There is something about the environment of the tradeshow where a customer or prospect will come and say in very passionate terms: I have the following business problem or I am looking for a product that solves this need. Sometimes those conversations involve us telling the customer/prospect that ClickTracks can solve a particular problem, whereas other times the conversations are more insightful making us think of ways to help solve their pain (this makes us learn from our customers). We are very methodical in the way we add features to the product, we generally don’t add features unless it solves a compelling need and this is a strategy I have learned from my past experiences doing website analysis. We are constantly trying to stay away from feature bloat by listening closely to the problems the customers are trying to solve.

[Manoj] – Focus is key because there are times with analytics packages you are lost when having to sift through so many reports.

[John] - Yes exactly, you obviously are an experienced user. We try to keep the promise that our software does less; we come right out and say that. Adding features makes a product harder to use so you’d better be sure there are compelling reasons behind adding it. Our users don’t have time to go through extra features and we don’t want to get in their way when they’re just trying to get the job done.

[Manoj] – I really like the idea that even you, the CEO gets involved in things like teaching classes.

[John] – Yeah (Laughs), I am flattered you noticed such a thing. I really enjoy doing that because it’s a lot of fun and we learn what our customers are trying to accomplish in their analytics. Through the act of teaching these classes we get to help customers solve these needs and I get a lot of satisfaction out of that.

[Manoj]- What is one of the best business decisions you’ve made?

[John] – Good question, superficially I might say starting the company but I might also say that early on we wanted to present data that was animated on the screen, because I have always thought the brain is very good at interpreting data that moves temporally. However, I am really glad we didn’t go down that path. It leads to products that are useful for entertainment but not for decision making. It was a concept that I had early on and I am glad we abandoned it.

[Manoj] – What makes a good Web Analytics Vendor?

[John] - I think training and support, because you gain so much through one on one training and the process of good informed assistance. The value of the data and price of failure of a bad implementation is so high that a vendor really needs to nail this item. I am very biased to the idea of analysis rather than reporting because if you find yourself only looking at the trends of visitors to your site you are probably not going to succeed at improving your website. What makes a good web analyst and good web analytics package are somewhat related. Interactive exploration is important, for example: 2 months after I have collected my data, can I go back and add another segment (metric) and measure it against my previously collected data. We have designed our product to do that and that’s what we’re known for. It’s this idea that helps a good analyst think and understand why things are happening on a website rather than simply looking at a graph that goes up and to the right. That in turn requires some training.

[Manoj] – Do you have hints or tidbits for some upcoming products?

[John] – Let me say that we will be coming out with API level access to the underlying data store of ClickTracks. We have very good reasons for not releasing this earlier but this has been a frequently requested feature.

[Manoj] – I have some background in software development so I can understand how useful and powerful this feature can be.

[Manoj] – You were recently purchased by J.L Halsey, what does this do for ClickTracks (i.e. any kind of leverage?).

[John] – J.L. Halsey already owns 2 other companies that sell product to digital marketers. At the same time they acquired ClickTracks they also acquired Hot Banana (CMS Vendor) and you can clearly see that there is an intent to build a suite of products that focuses primarily on customer acquisition and retention. ClickTracks is mainly about the analysis of customer acquisition (email campaigns, search campaigns, click fraud). We now have easier access to resources allowing us to grow our business faster. We basically have more scale and reach (we are growing and hiring).

[Manoj] – What does the future hold for ClickTracks and the rest of the Industry?

[John] - I hope that we’ll get some consensus on the terminology and best practices. Web Analytics is sort of like accounting in that dealing with things that can be interpreted in different ways makes for different vendors have different standards (this is something users complain about). In the web analytics industry we don’t yet accept the idea that the data is open to interpretation because I hear people saying that “I just want the numbers to agree” (across different vendors). I feel that they don’t need to agree because there are reasons that company A and company B count things differently. In accounting we readily accept that some things are depreciated over 3 years and some over 5. They don’t agree, and there are good reasons because they are used for different things. We do, however, need to agree on what the underlying standards are, in the same way we all know what a year is. As the concepts mature it will become less specialized and will be part of marketing analysis. I think we’ll move away from the term Web Analytics to Digital Marketing Analytics (or Marketing Analytics).

[Manoj] – Top 5 things you enjoy most working at ClickTracks.

[John] -

- Innovating

- Talking to the Customer

- Meeting Colleagues at Tradeshows/Networking Events

- Teaching

- Working with very bright people

[Manoj] – It’s always nice to enjoy who you work with.

[John] – Yes and I am very fortunate.

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Manoj has been working in the search engine marketing industry since 2002. He started out as a software developer but now provides in-depth web site analysis using web analytics.

http://www.enquiro.com

Manoj is also the author of Web Analytics World. Web Analytics is an essential component in developing a successful
online campaign. Help convert visitors into customers by understanding
them.

In the class (note: the same topic will be presented on Monday and Tuesday) John will get down to the nitty-gritty of common web analytics myths, pinpointing best practices as well as traps to avoid. The class is appropriate for web analytics newbies as well as veterans. Clicktracks promises that attendees will come away with a new perspective on how to interpret web analytics data and make sound online marketing decisions. Register for the class at http://www.clicktracks.com/seminars/

For more information:http://www.clicktracks.com/news.php?id=92

I like what ClickTracks is doing with it’s free Classes, it gives a chance for Site Owners and marketers to experience the ClickTracks experience with no obligation. It also helps current ClickTracks users by pinpointing “nuggets” of useful information.

Bookmark WebProNews:

Manoj has been working in the search engine marketing industry since 2002. He started out as a software developer but now provides in-depth web site analysis using web analytics.

http://www.enquiro.com

Manoj is also the author of Web Analytics World. Web Analytics is an essential component in developing a successful
online campaign. Help convert visitors into customers by understanding
them.

The deal is worth approximately $10 million US (which includes cash + stock options). This is a fairly substantial deal considering that ClickTracks is bretty big name in the Web Analytics World. Also see Andy Beal’s post at Internet Financial News.

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Bookmark WebProNews:

Manoj has been working in the search engine marketing industry since 2002. He started out as a software developer but now provides in-depth web site analysis using web analytics.

http://www.enquiro.com

Manoj is also the author of Web Analytics World. Web Analytics is an essential component in developing a successful
online campaign. Help convert visitors into customers by understanding
them.

ClickTracks Analytics announced an 83 percent revenue growth over the same quarter in 2005, and a 22 percent increase over Q4 2005. The company reported 97 percent revenue growth in 2005; financial numbers were not disclosed for the privately held Santa Cruz, CA, company.

The company also gained a place in Gartner’s coverage of the web analytics industry, ClickTracks said:

ClickTracks founder and CEO John Marshall cited a couple of reasons for their strong sales growth, with increases in new hosted business and licenses of ClickTracks’ JavaScript data collection (JDC) product; continued growth in the small-to-medium business market, and new features in ClickTracks’ latest release, Version 6.

The company announced in February its Version 6.1 release would contain click-fraud reporting technology. There should be general availability of the newest version this month.

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David Utter is a staff writer for WebProNews covering technology and business.