I've been thinking about the stock exchange issue for quite a while now and wanted to share my thoughts on how certain composites were put together.
Let me explain. Some time ago, one late evening, after having closed my laptop, I was zapping on the TV and landed upon an interesting documentary about the CAC40.
I learned to my bewilderness that the CAC40 does not technically reflect the actual 40 largest corporations listed on the French stock exchange. (more…)
Finally. My first post on this blog!!!
Not that I have a fanclub waiting for my feedback, but I know René and Aurélie were eagerly expecting some more technical input from my side, so that we kind of cover all different aspects of WebAnalytics on this blog.
Cause don't be mistaken, although the business side of WebAnalytics is far important and indispensable for marketeers, they need a strong technical backup team.
IT remains responsible for the optimal functioning of the web analytics software and related hardware.
In corder to simplify the technical implementation and the maintenance of their solution, most web analytics vendors only propose ASP solutions.
But due to the fact that more and more tagging solutions are being used, IT often becomes also responsible for automatic tagging through the CMS system and must ensure correct traffic flow or bandwidth. So even if a company chooses for an ASP WebAnalytics product, IT is still needed. (more…)
For the second year in a row, Christian and Karine held the Search & Measure Congress, this time at the San Marco village, between Antwerp and Brussels. The location was unusual in a positive and quite kitschy way (the ceiling was painted with the sky and clouds) but adapted to the needs of the Congress as such and as usual, the logistics ran like clockwork.
The Search & Measure Congress addresses both novices as more experienced users about search engines and web analytics, on the Belgian market. Well actually, there were some Dutch there as well, as I saw a couple of my native countries' license plates when I parked my little WA.be Smart.
For novice users, the objective was to create awareness and opportunities of these SEO/SEM & WA techniques and experienced users were supposed to learn more about extra opportunities and market trends. (more…)
Ok, back to Friday, the Search & Measure Congress held last Friday between Antwerp and Brussels.
Let’s now take my personal view upon WA vendors.
This blog if off course open to comments and do not hesitate to post your opinion or to contact me.
The only thing I actually regretted about the Congress was that the opportunity for questions was quite limited. I have a few for the different vendors 😉
Present WA vendors were: SAS, WebTrends, WebSideStory and NedStat. (more…)
I just wanted to express the joy and hope that I feel today. ETA has announced a ‘permanent’ cease fire. As a Spaniard and having studied the Basque Nationalism during my university studies this day is one of the most happy days of my life. I hope that this ETA’s announcement is really sincere. Sorry for posting this non ‘webanalytics’ content but I wanted to share my happiness with all of you.
Long life to peace and democracy!
René
In early February Forrester issued a report about the Web Analytics market. That report positioned WebTrends as #1 in Market size and Strategy. If you see the graph below, you’ll see that regarding the current offering WebTrends was a little bit behind Visual Sciences and Omniture. But that was with Version 7.5!
With version 8 which has been called MarketingLab, WebTrends takes a huge step forward and positions as #1 also regarding its current offering. (more…)
While we @OX2 are thinking harder and harder about the use of the word CMS (content management system), Webtrends’ release of MarketingLab titles in their latest communication “Get reading for the changing world of marketing..”.
Seems we are on the same wavelength regarding the evolution of marketing activities or the responsibilities of CMOs (Chief Marketing Executives), as the Americans call them.
So, we’ve got a date: March 23rd at 10 AM (PST)… will need some calculations there 😉
Sign up here.
The interesting thing is also that WebTrends suggests reading their (annual) CMO report, which I just did and yes, I was surprised by the numbers on different aspects. (more…)
While I was enjoying a West Wing episode after a long week, a fabulous French/Belgian dinner and an interesting conversation (thank you Axel), my husband barged in telling me that some guy called Fred had been blogging on the WA Yahoo user group. I haven't read it yet (will do so after this post) but apparently, this Fred was saying all kinds of things amongst which the fact that guys like Peterson were biased. (more…)
I've never started a blog. For the last weeks, I've been spending time reading other people's opinion and sometimes sharing my thoughts but I must admit that this is a jump in the pool for me!
Let's find out if I'm gonna just dangle my feet or really jump off from the diving board.
Anyhow, let's start with a date: next Wednesday: March 8th it's Womens Day 😉
Just to let you guys out there notice us women a bit and not forget that we are out there, on the field, have things to say and do understand technical things. (more…)
Following our 2005’s edition of our Web Analytics Day‘s feedback (btw, thanks to the 64 people that filled-in our 6 pages long feed-back form ;-)), I thought that this Blog would be a better place to share some ideas with you about our next edition that we will organize this year.
We had many constructive feedbacks last year and here are some changes that we plan for the next edition that will take place for its second edition also at the FEB/VBO.
Some planned changes:
We are of course open to your suggestions. Don’t hesitate to post a comment to share your ideas.
——————————————————————————————————————-
Subscribe to our WebAnalytics.be Newsletter if you would like to be kept posted
As some of you might have noticed in our last WebAnalytics.be newsletter, WebTrends will be releasing shortly WebTrends Marketing Lab. What we have been able to see so far is very promissing and we can tell that we are very excited at OX2 with this new launch that will help our current and future clients to better measure and optimize their online activities.
As you understand I cannot give you any info at this stage, but I encourage you to attend the webcast that will take place in a couple of weeks.
Also if you want to follow the buzz around this new release I invite you to check the Blog of one of WebTrends Architects: Eric Butler.
My wife and I have an Interactive Agency in Belgium (OX2) and her dream has always been to work with numbers and KPIs. Before creating OX2 Aurélie has worked in the Insurance and Banking sector in Internet related projects but she was always complaining that whenever she was requesting something to the Technical guys the most common answer was ‘it’s too difficult’ or ‘it’s not possible’. Sick of the technical burdens, when she discovered our team she was thrilled by the fact that ‘Impossible’ wasn’t in our vocabulary and she decided to work on the ‘agency’ side.
OX2 was created from the ashes of Oniros Illusions Studio a company devoted to Gaming and Internet developments that I joined in 2001. I was head of the Internet division and in 2003 after a bankruptcy (we had problems selling a game that was in development which made us run out of cash) I decided to buy what was left of the company to continue the Internet activities which were profitable and in line with my aspirations. This is how OX2 was born. The Internet team was hired again by the new company and all of our Internet clients remained with us. The main characteristics of the team back then were their technical capabilities. Since 1999 our team has been building Content Management Systems used by RTL Group, Bridgestone Europe and many other of our clients. Their technical skills are extraordinary and this is what pushed me to create OX2. What I’ve seen very often among my competitors is that they are very good in marketing and design but when it comes to build what they had in mind problems arise. With my team I’ve never experienced a project that they weren’t able to complete.
One year after we created OX2 we launched our Web Analytics services by partnering with WebTrends, which was for us the best tool in the Belgian market (I know that you’re going to say that there are other tools as good as WT but their support in Europe and specially Belgium wasn’t convincing us). When we took a look at the version 7 my reaction was ‘Wow! Finally a WA solution for business users’. Then we started our pilgrimage in order to push Web Analytics in Belgium. A few months after the ‘debut’ of our partnership with WebTrends we won a tender in order to implement WebTrends at Belgacom, the former state telecommunications monopoly company. From there clients started to knock at our door and since then we have helped a couple of dozen of clients (mostly multinationals as Bridgestone Europe, Toyota Europe or Stanley Europe and top Belgian companies as Atlas Copco, Barco or Isabel).
Last year we really created a Business Unit devoted to Web Analytics (we are the only Interactive Agency for the moment in the Belgian market having done so) and created a website www.webanalytics.be. We were also named Top Partner WebTrends 2004 South (don’t ask me why but Belgium was considered by NetIQ/WebTrends as part of south of Europe ;-)).
In June Aurélie and I got married (view the amount of work we had, our honeymoon was shared with our mobiles and laptops, but we enjoyed a very pleasant stay at Colletta 100km north from Genova in Italy).
After the summer OX2 was appointed as first European member of the WebTrends Insight Network (WIN).
In November we organized a Web Analytics Day at the Federation of Belgian Enterprises which attracted over 120 registrants (for a country as Belgium we consider this a great success as Web Analytics is not yet as mature as in other countries, and usually WA seminars attracted less than 20 people). During that day we presented WebTrends but also a more general view of how to launch a Web Analytics project among large organizations. The afternoon was devoted to Workshops around Web Analytics and SEO, Emailing Campaigns and Conversion.
Then Google sooner than expected launched Google Analytics (a few days after our Web Analytics Day) and this pushed the awareness of Web Analytics all of a sudden worldwide. We couldn’t remain without reaction so the first thing we did was to test extensively GA in order to better understand its capabilities. After having two of our WA specialists analyzing GA for 2 weeks, we decided to create a package in order to assist clients in their GA implementation. Even though GA doesn’t go as far as WT in many things (view our GA vs WT quick explanation) it is a perfect solution for companies that want to start the Web Analytics learning curve but that don’t have the budgets in order to buy a WT license. We called that package ‘GA Start‘ and it allows beginners to start the journey of Web Analytics the right way.
This year we have concentrated our efforts in integrating WebTrends with our CMS in order to ease the configuration of WT directly from the CMS. You can define translation files to avoid unmeaningful IDs in the reports, Content Groups and even conversion funnels.
Well, I’m getting a bit long in my explanations (must be my Spanish side ;-)), let’s get back to the question of why this blog now that you know a bit more about ourselves.
This Blog has been created to allow our team members to share with you and the rest of the world their ideas thoughts and views on Web Analytics. It will also allow me not to get awaken at 2 in the morning by my wife when she has had a new idea or thought about Web Analytics. From now on she will be able to write it here and I’ll enjoy the reading in the morning with my cup of coffee 😉
Our aim is to make the market going forward and adopt Web Analytics. The era of websites seen as purely cost centers is over. Now we need to define business objectives and measure in order to report the ROI on the one hand and optimize the online initiatives on the other to maximize the returns.
We are also conscious that the Web Analytics learning curve is long and this is why we try to feed our clients with our knowledge to help them reach self sufficiency.
OX2 Web Analytics Blog 