Archive for May, 2006

Web Analytics: what about Packet Sniffing?

May 31, 2006

As from time to time we come along a web analytics solution that makes use of Packet (or IP) Sniffing, I took the opportunity during the Emetrics Summit 2006 in London to ask the different vendors that were present what they thought about this quite new technology, as the opinions were all on the same line.

The first Packet Sniffer everFor those who don't know about this technique, packet sniffing is designed for the purpose of monitoring network traffic in order to recognize and decode certain packets of interest. It makes use of a black box which is installed in the network.
Packet sniffing is also widely used by hackers and crackers to gather information illegally about networks they intend to break into. Using a packet sniffer it is possible to capture data like passwords, IP addresses, protocols being used on the network and other information that will help the attacker infiltrate the network.

And lately it is being used for web analytics reporting as well.

So what was the outcome of the nice little discussion I started during Emetrics: (more…)

Posted in Business Tips and Tricks, Emetrics Summit London 2006, Technical tips and tricks, Web Analytics | 6 Comments »

Some thoughts about Omniture’s IPO II (+ top WA players’ strategy)

May 27, 2006

OmnitureSome weeks ago I posted a quick comment on Omniture going public. I didn't expect that little post to be so popular. It has become one of our top 5 posts more visited and recently a happy customer of Omniture (my supposing is based on the fact that he's an Omniture customer) has just posted a comment. John doesn't join me in my assumption that Omniture 'needs' money. This, to him does not merely justify their IPO and I agree. My reflections are today based on different facts coming from multiple sources. I wanted to share my current thoughts. (more…)

Posted in Thoughts and Ideas, Web Analytics, Web Analytics Industry News, WebTrends | 4 Comments »

Top 10 Web Analytics KPI (Key Performance Indicators)

May 20, 2006

The Big Book of Key Performance Indicators by Eric PetersonDuring the Emetrics Summit, we also had interesting discussions about the top 10 KPIs and the inevitable discussion about what could be considered a KPI and not. I'm not as purist and tend not to bother too much when clients consider some figures to be KPIs while they actually aren't as I believe that they have to figure it out, with our help, slowly but surely. The Web Analytics learning curve is long so it's often easier to go along and let the clients find out by themselves after a while. I often hear "but that's not really important" after a couple of months in a project and that shows me I'm doing a good job.

So, Eric Peterson defined a KPI as a percentage or a ratio. I can understand that for some business models, pure figures can be considered KPIs as well. A website based upon the advertising model will consider unique visitors as a KPI as that is the information that will make their clients decide to choose their website in place of the competitors'.
Of course, the important thing will be to see whether the number of page views per visitor have actually increased or not (if we are still taking about such a business model) and the frequency of visits and we could indeed put this into a percentage. Note that seasonality will also be an issue so an increase in terms of percentage on a monthly basis might not be good news for July and August.
Anyhow, getting back to my KPI list.

  1. surprise, surprise: the ability of defining visits and unique visitors as accuratly as possible. I can't say it enough: tagging + first party cookies. Do me a favour, implement that, stop talking to me about accuracy and let's dig into the figures; (more…)

Posted in Business Tips and Tricks, Emetrics Summit London 2006, Thoughts and Ideas, Web Analytics | 8 Comments »

Web Analytics Market Share

May 19, 2006

I was reviewing search terms used to come to this blog and found the term "Web Analytics Market Share" popping up a couple of times.
I'm getting a good idea of a couple of European markets but won't publish this kind of information because I think its not my role. And I'm not objective …

My first reaction was, if this guy (or woman) is really interested in that kind of information and we are talking about my local market, have them call me.

My second reaction was: are we talking about products or services?

My third reaction becomes esoteric as I start to wonder how the proportion is starting to evolve between the 2 aspects. And then I think of Avinash and his presentation at the Emetrics summit: 10% is the product, 90 % is the brains.

In the light of my previous post, I think the proportion is not there yet but we are all striving towards getting the right balance, assuring a better evolution of our trade.

Posted in Thoughts and Ideas, Web Analytics | 2 Comments »

Setting pollution related benchmarks

May 19, 2006

After a not great week, I was cooling off in front of the 7:30 local news on the RTBF.

EUA Price last 30 days (Carbon Market Europe)An interesting news-cover discussed the results of the measure of pollution quotas.
Following Kyoto, official instances set-up a measure system in order to determine whether polluting companies where meeting their maximum allowed quantity of for example CO2 emissions.

Apparently, they're all meeting their quotas.

This holds as consequence that the price of the CO2 stock, that can be bought on an official market if your company is exceeding the quotas, remains rather low. The graph shows price drop over the last month.

PointCarbon is the leading provider of independent analysis, forecasting, market intelligence and news for the power, gas and carbon emissions markets. They confirm the findings.

The WWF – World Wildlife Fund – concurs that emission rates are being met and that action should be taken based upon the results of these findings.

It reminds me of the recurrent questions I get regarding conversion rates from my clients… (more…)

Posted in Business Tips and Tricks, Thoughts and Ideas, Web Analytics | 4 Comments »

Top 10 Web Analytics problems

May 19, 2006

Following discussions hosted by Jim Sterne during the Emetrics Summit in London, the attendees came up with the following list of major problems, encountered during a Web Analytics project. We've takken the liberty to select a few that we regularly also face.

  1. No objectives: amasing isn't it? yes well this is for most of my clients and probably the reason why they don't like me in the beginning as they get a beating in the form of : "what are you actually trying to acheive? you're spending thousands of euros on a website and for what? what's the bottom line and how can we measure it?". Once we got over that one, the fun part starts 😉 (more…)

Posted in Emetrics Summit London 2006, Web Analytics | 2 Comments »

Del.icio.us, competitor to Google?

May 18, 2006

There was an interesting very short discussion during the Emetrics Summit about Del.icio.us supplementing Google in terms of tools used to find pertinent information.

VS Google Logo

(more…)

Posted in Emetrics Summit London 2006, Thoughts and Ideas, Web Analytics | Comments Off on Del.icio.us, competitor to Google?

IT responsibles taking the lead in Web Analytics?

May 17, 2006

After the first day of the Emetrics Summit, I was struck by the position held by some speakers within their respective companies.

Of course, there were consultants and web analytics specialists attending the conference such as Siegert and myself or specialists involved in email marketing, SEO and so forth but in terms of end users, the titles I found on the presentations were actually not those that I had imagined.

(more…)

Posted in Emetrics Summit London 2006, Thoughts and Ideas, Web Analytics | Comments Off on IT responsibles taking the lead in Web Analytics?

The State of European Web Analytics: moving the right way!

May 16, 2006

I was reading my emails this morning when I received a mail from Siegert. He sent me an interesting article by Neil Mason on clickz. The article is named 'The State of Web Analytics' where Neil shares his vision about the European Web Analytics market in comparison with the US market and also with last year.

I'm happy to see that my team was mentioned (to my knowledge Aurélie & Siegert where the only Belgian atendees) and here's a promising quote:

"Certainly, there was more evidence (European) businesses are deploying Web analytics and seeing the benefits."

Read more here

Some other Emetrics Reviews:

Vicky Brock of HBR: The 2006 Emetrics Summit London
Mike Grehan of Smart Interactive : eMetrics Summit 2006
If you also atended the Emetrics Summit, don't hesitate to share your experiences and send me your report, I'll publish it under this post.

Posted in Emetrics Summit London 2006, Web Analytics | 1 Comment »

Emetrics Summit London 2006: Vendors, name 1 thing you do better than WebTrends

May 16, 2006

Siegert planted the scene related to our attendance of the Emetrics Summit in London, May last. I would like to focus on one major issue that stroke and comforted me during this 3 day event regarding Web Analytics: what vendors thought of and could do better than WebTrends.

(more…)

Posted in Emetrics Summit London 2006, Web Analytics, Web Analytics Industry News, WebTrends | 2 Comments »

Google Trends, a Geomarketing Research tool? Practical Case: Omniture vs WebTrends

May 15, 2006

Google Trends LogoThis past day I've been playing around with the new born form Google: Google Trends. This is an interesting tool (reminds me of Technorati with the little graph on the left side) that allows to view the popularity of search keywords or phrases.  It even allow comparisons.

As a picture often works better than words, see hereunder the search made for some Web Analytics solutions

Click on this link:

(more…)

Posted in Thoughts and Ideas, Web Analytics, WebTrends | Comments Off on Google Trends, a Geomarketing Research tool? Practical Case: Omniture vs WebTrends

Speaking at the 9th Database Marketing Conference Day

May 15, 2006

Last week I was invited to make a case presentation at the 9th Database Marketing Conference Day organized by the Stichting Marketing Foundation. It was the first time I attended the event, and I was surprised by its size. I imagined it would be smaller but looking at the attendees list, there are no less than 170 people.

In the afternoon I was addressing a presentation with one of our clients, Thomas Dusart, Franchise & Marketing Director at Deli SA (Panos). We were presenting an online campaign that we did last November called 'Click & Win'. The audience seemed pleased by the presentation and the most interesting slides were the ones around the results and Web Analytics. The idea was to present how a campaign mixing online & offline initiatives could be very successful and not necessarily expensive. Among the objectives, we wanted to collect 20.000 contact details of customers within 1 month. We stopped the campaign after 18 days as we had already over 40.000 which was more than we expected.

(more…)

Posted in About us, Business Tips and Tricks, Events | 1 Comment »

We went to Emetrics Summit London 2006!

May 15, 2006

It was Wednesday morning, 3 May, 7am. I woke up in a nice little hotel near Hide Park in London, the sun was shining for the first time this year, and I had an Emetrics Summit to go to. Life can be beautiful…
After a real English breakfast with eggs and beans, Aurélie and I went of to the one and only real Emetrics Summit that was presented by Jim Sterne and with numerous interesting speakers and slots!!!

Emetrics logo

(more…)

Posted in Emetrics Summit London 2006, Thoughts and Ideas, Web Analytics | 1 Comment »