Archive for September, 2007

BarCamp Buenos Aires (Argentina)

September 29, 2007

barcamp_logo.jpgThis month, Juan Damia, asked me to participate to the first BarCamp in Argentina that will take place in a few hours in Buenos Aires. I was given 10 minutes to discuss about the state of Web Analytics in Europe and provide some examples of works that we have done at OX2.

You may know what a BarCamp is, if not, here’s a quick definition from Wikipedia:

BarCamp is an international network of user generated conferences — open, participatory workshop-events, whose content is provided by participants — often focusing on early-stage web applications, and related open source technologies, social protocols, and open data formats.

As it was a bit complicated to travel to Argentina for this week-end (next week I’m traveling to the Canary Islands, in 2 weeks to Washington and in 4 to Stockholm), we decided to prepare a little video with my intervention and connect online for the Q&A. (more…)

Web Analytics Day 2007 coverage

September 27, 2007

pic_docshevel.jpgI had made a comment on Rene’s thank you post but it didn’t give due credit and visibility to the different organizations, sites, blogs and other publications who were kind enough to help us spread the word and bring you to this very successful event. So here it is, thanks again, folks! 😀

(more…)

In a few weeks…. eMetrics Washington!

September 26, 2007

eMetrics Washington 2007It’s becoming a little tradition to fly over to the US to attend the eMetrics Summits. In a few weeks in Washington Aurélie and I will be attending the eMetrics Marketing Optimization Summit and we’re really looking forward. Aurélie will be presenting and I’ll be networking and attending the lobby bar as usual. And yes, don’t worry, I’ll bring the chocolates 😉

I’m really looking forward catching up with all our Web Analytics friends from the other side of the Atlantic (Eric, Jim, Avinash, Bryan, Clint, Stéphane, Ian, Joseph, Judah, Dylan, Andrea, Brian, June, Braden, …) but also some European friends that will also be making the trip as Vicky, Neil and Oliver.

If you’re serious about Web Analytics, this is the conference you need to attend. If you attended our Web Analytics Day and you enjoyed it, attend eMetrics you will be bluffed.

Here’s a little video that I hope will make you think about it:

If you can’t attend eMetrics Washington, you can also attend eMetrics Stockholm that we will be also attending and were Aurélie is also speaking 😉

I wanted also to announce that it’s our Design Department that has come up with the new eMetrics logo and the creatives used to advertise this event.

See you in Washington DC,

René

P.S. You can read previous posts about previous eMetrics Summits here.

OX2 & Omniture

September 22, 2007

Omniture[Click for French version]

omniture_certified_logo.gifWith the recent arrival of Dave Rhee at OX2, our web analytics team now includes three full-fledged Omniture Certified Professionals, including Aurélie and yours truly. This is due in great part to the partnership that was just signed between Omniture and OX2 and announced by Neil Morgan during the Web Analytics Day on September 14th. Neil graciously acknowledged OX2’s expertise with Omniture since both Dave and myself had the unique opportunity to deploy Omniture’s web analytics tools for Fortune 500 companies and now this expertise is officially available to OX2 clients.

OX2 is now Omniture’s preferred partner for Belgium but our partnership extends of course to France, Germany, and beyond!

Adding Omniture to our skill portfolio was a logical step in our quest to best serve the interests of our clients and help them grow their online strategy by taking decisions based on hard, concrete data.

Thanks to the Omniture team for placing their trust in us and we are looking forward to a fruitful collaboration! 🙂

 

OX2 presence

The Web Analytics Day was also a good occasion for OX2 to present Dave and myself as Analytics Country Managers for Germany and France respectively, with Aurélie leading our (increasingly) European activities from our Brussels offices. This reinforced OX2’s image as a leading pan-European consultancy in the field of Web Analytics as well as bringing more credit to our position as a vendor-independent agency.

As you can see from the map here, there is plenty of room for us to grow but we’re working on it 😉

Take note in your calendar that OX2 and Omniture will both be presenting at the Customer First event in Brussels between October 18th and 19th.

Thanks for reading and, as usual, constructive comments are welcome 🙂

***

Version française (more…)

Eric T. Peterson: ‘Web Analytics is Easy?’

September 20, 2007

For those of you who couldn’t attend our Web Analytics Day and enjoy Eric presenting, you can view hereunder a video taken at eDay in Rotterdam that features Eric’s Peterson presentation “Web Analytics is Easy” which was the first of the 3 presentations Eric did at our last week’s event.

Web Analytics embracing Customer Analytics

September 20, 2007

robert_doisneau_le_baiser_de_lhotel_de_ville_kiss_at_the_hotel_de__25_313.jpgThe advent of free Web Analytics tools puts pressure upon pricings. Media buying agencies are working hard to report useful results. Advanced Web Analytics clients are adapting their data gathering strategies to feed online data into data warehouses and revisiting the very concept of business intelligence.

We all agree that we have to make decisions based upon data. Where to start?
With which tool, using which team to support findings – and actions -, which consequences would it hold upon the very core of your organisation? (more…)

OX2 Web Analytics Day 2007: Thank you & Feedback

September 18, 2007

Here’s a little video presenting the Web Analytics Day that took place last week here in Brussels done by Roberto, one of our Design team members.

I wanted again to thank all the persons that made this unique event possible and specially to:

Eric for having accepted to deliver 3 outstanding presentations that really made the day worth it.

Ian Thomas for giving us the exclusive moment of presenting Microsoft Gatineau

– All the sponsors (Omniture, WebTrends, IndexTools, Microsoft, Nedstat & Extenseo) for supporting this event and allowing us to invite the practitioners.

– All OX2 team that has been working hard on top of their day2day jobs to get this event ready.

– And last but not least, all the participants that showed up. This event was for you and the best gauge that I can think of to measure the successof the event are the feedback forms. Besides one person that complained because it was too much oriented for big compagnies, here are some interesting statistics from the 50 forms that we received back:

100% of respondents found the conference instructive

100% said that the agenda and topics matched their expectations

100% would recommend the event to their friends

Regarding the speakers, the ranking of satisfaction was pretty much as expected: Eric leads with almost everybody stating that he was very good followed by Aurélie, Dave and Stephan. On the vendors side, the ranking of satisfaction placed Omniture followed by WebTrends and then Indextools, Nedstat and Extenseo.

I have to admit that we were really amazed by the feedback forms and the positive emails that we have received since last friday. Here are some of the comments we have received:

René, Aurélie, just a short note to say congratulations and thank you for today, I thought the audience, content and venue were all first class!

Thanks for hosting the event last week. I thought it was very informative and I certainly picked up a few useful insights.

I just wanted to congratulate you guys again in setting up this great event. All the people I have spoke to during the day where all enthusiastic about the event and Web Analytics.

Thank you for your event, I was really impressed

As I just told Rene over the phone. I think it was an amazing event on the level of Emetrics (and I do about 25 shows a year).

this last comment really made my day, as eMetrics is for me the nirvana of the Web Analytics event.

Thanks again to everybody that came and allowed this event to be a great success.

And yes, see you next year at our third OX2 Web Analytics Day Brussels (It’s going to be difficult to do better I think…).

René

P.S. BTW, you can also view some pictures of the event at Flickr.

Web Analytics Day Brussels: a European shock therapy in Web Analytics

September 16, 2007

My conference journey started out on Thursday, when I hooked up with a couple of Belgian clients at the eDay in Rotterdam, before heading back to Brussels together with Eric, after his brief radio interview, where I was lucky enough to play around with his iPhone. To be quite honest, I’m not really an early adopter but if you touch it, believe me, you want one and leaving your credit card at home doesn’t really seem to work 😉
The car ride back home went fast – as we both like to drive fast – and discussed on the way recent evolutions of the Web Analytics industry, including Megan Burns’ latest Forrester wave that had been officially released a couple of days before.
To be quite honest, the night was short and the next day promised to be quite long as I picked up both Dave and Eric to head to the Federation of Enterprises in Brussels in order to have breakfast around 8 am.

WAD at the FEB

When setting up the Web Analytics Day in Brussels, our intention was mainly to get practitioners from major Belgian companies – and picked up a couple of international attendees in the process – in order to allow them to get a full review of what Web Analytics is actually about, looking beyond the pure acquisition of a web analytics tool. As Eric’s Web Analytics is Easy presentation also emphasized, using his RAMP analogy, the first letter stands for Ressources which include both technology as well as people. The other acronyms respectively stand for Analysis, Multivariate testing & Processes. (more…)

Social Networks and Influence Analytics at the Web Analytics Day

September 16, 2007

Dave Rhee’s Influence Analytics for Social Networks presentation

“Wandering” Dave Rhee here – reporting on last Friday’s second Web Analytics Day organized in Brussels by OX2, for which I had the honor of delivering a presentation about one of my favorite subjects, Social Networks, and more specifically, analytics which can help determine the influence of individuals within those networks.

Overall, the day went really well, and not just because the venue was well-chosen and food and cocktails were great, but because we had a very large proportion of actual web analytics practitioners present, and just enough of a vendor presence to help answer the questions which inevitably arose. Although a few people had to leave in the afternoon, the vast majority chose to stay until the very end (a good success metric!), and even though the day was full of information, the attendees were so engaged that we usually ran out of time before running out of questions.

Microsoft’s worldwide first look at Gatineau was certainly a surprise highlight for most attendees, and emphasized how much Microsoft values its European audience for Web Analytics tools, as well as how highly regarded OX2 is in the global web analytics community.

Watch this space for video highlights of all the presentations, including Stephan Loerke’s opening keynote from the World Federation of Advertisers, and Eric T. Peterson’s usual brilliance in summarizing difficult concepts in a way that makes perfect sense to the rest of us. And of course, our own Aurélie Pols, whom you know from this blog, provided an overview of running a web analytics implementation project smoothly, given her extensive experience in helping OX2 Clients avoid common problems with their own sites.

I led off my own presentation in the afternoon with the worst slide of the day: a very dense table comparing several media, including press releases, surveys, blogs, audio and video podcasts, discussion message boards, social networks like Facebook or Myspace, and immersive environments like Second Life. The comparison attributes included style, “coolness factor,” ability to control your message, the value of feedback you can collect, the level of intimacy and trust possible, what resources are required to commit to creation and maintenance, the primary risk factors, and finally, the best use for that type of medium. (more…)

Exclusive Video: Microsoft Gatineau presented by Ian Thomas @ OX2 Web Analytics Day 2007

September 16, 2007

Last friday, Aurélie and I had the pleasure to host our second Web Analytics Day.  It was a great event with over 100 participants attending.  One of the key moments was when Ian Thomas presented to the audience the forth coming Web Analytics tool: Microsoft Gatineau.  Eric and Robin have already published the slides of the presentation, you’ll find hereafter the video of Ian’s presentation:

We wanted to thank again Ian for this Worldwide Première presentation of Gatineau and for even personalizing the presentation to the Belgian market with his chocolate example 😉

If you want to sign up for Gatineau’s Beta, you just need to go here.

We will be publishing more material and comments from OX2’s Web Analytics Day 2007 in the coming days so keep checking if you’re interested or subscribe to our RSS feed.

René

Online Recruiting and Web Analytics

September 4, 2007

Recruitment and Web AnalyticsReading an old post on the blog of Ian Thomas, ‘Lies, Damned Lies’, on Web Analytics in online recruiting, and having worked on a couple of Web Analytics projects for online recruitment agencies, together with the OX2 team, we decided to find out which web analytics tools are currently used by the different recruiting companies which have a presence in Belgium, the Netherlands and France at the same time.

What initially aroused my interest in Ian Thomas’post was next paragraph:

One of the loops that people often get themselves into with Web Analytics is an assumption that what you learn from your web analytics can only be applied directly back to the site, or at a stretch, at the marketing for the site. But that’s not true, of course: web analytics can provide all sorts of insights that can be applied across a business, sometimes in areas not related to the web at all.

Read the rest of the post on: http://www.liesdamnedlies.com/2007/03/web_analytics_i.html

And this last sentence is of course more than true, but typically companies, and this doesn’t apply only to online recruitment agencies, don’t take full advantage of what is possible with the web analytics tool they have.

I have summed up some KPIs for online recruitement sites, and tried to show some possible areas, online and offline, where they could be applied: (more…)