Author Archive
October 23, 2006
The eMetrics summit held in Washington last week was attended by some 480 participants, of which only 9 companies from Europe were present! Amongst which, Italy was represented by Giovanni (left) from BigBang, Scotland by Vicky Brock* (right) from Highland Business Research and us, little Belgians. Avinash (middle) is an exception, I’d call him a world citizen and one of our greatest inspirators.
The week before attending, I received an email from Brian Induni, Web Analytics Association President, regarding a possible subcommittee about certification or how to define Web Analytics professionals.
During the course of this week, I was reminded of the fact that web analytics products are not a silver bullets, independantly of the one you choose. Some products are better than others, will adapt better to your needs; with the Golden Palm going to what I call the analyst nirvana, Visual Sciences. I mean WOW!
All presentators and attendees agree on the fact that Web Analytics is hard!
Education remains the essential underlying theme of sucessfull web analytics projects and as Avinash pointed out, curiosity and spending at least 20% of your time “providing analysis no one asked for and only you can perform” is actually where INSIGHT can be found. Gosh, that was so true!
Please note I used the term insight and not reporting or reports. It’s not about reports as these can be spitted out by any tool. The WSS whitepaper I commented upon (thanks Eric for your comments) last week defines KPIs for the media sector. Such reports can be set-up of course in WSS’s HBX but also WebTrends, Instadia or Coremetrics, amongst others.
(more…)
Posted in Business Tips and Tricks, eMetrics, Emetrics Summit Washington 2006, Events, Google Analytics, Technical tips and tricks, Web Analytics, WebTrends | 2 Comments »
October 23, 2006
I came to the eMetrics summit with a lot of questions and reflections about my own work over the past few years. Amongst which, some were answered; others emanated into new interrogations. Just like what happened in May in London, when I first attended an eMetrics summit, the first time I heard Avinash Kaushik speak about expensive consultants 😉
Once again, my products related spectrum freshened up, this time in Washington, by attending on the 3rd day the end-to-end presentations of Google Analytics and Visual Sciences.
The spectrum is one of price, reflecting the ungoing discussion about the issue surrounding product pricing and whether web analytics products should be free. I must admit not having a clear opinion on that and can only express my view as an economist. Using Web Analytics tools right, undeniably assures increased utility for your company. Your company would thus be ready to pay for such a service.
The price tag you’ll decide to put upon the acquisition of products and hopefully service, should reflect the commitment your company is willing to take while walking the path towards data driven decision making.
Also note that data driven decision making is about culture. Not all companies have such a culture in them and upper management will have to work hard to establish, or at the least reinforce, it.
A global Web Analytics strategy, that should unfold into data driven decision making, can be adresses in 2 main ways: decentralised and centralised.
(more…)
Posted in eMetrics, Emetrics Summit Washington 2006, Events, Thoughts and Ideas, Web Analytics, Web Analytics Industry News | Comments Off on The Web Analytics product spectrum: from Google Analytics to Visual Sciences
October 10, 2006
I downloaded the new WebSideStory
white paper this morning from the Digimedia.be newsletter that had entered my mailbox. At the end of the day, I took the time to rapidly glance through it’s content as the title sounded quite appealing: New Metrics for New Media.
It’s actually quite daunting how suddenly there is an increased interest for the revenues generated by media companies. Ever since the Economist landed a complete 3 page article on the subject this summer, I have the feeling that suddenly an entire sector is waking up. (more…)
Posted in Business Tips and Tricks, Thoughts and Ideas, Web 2.0, Web Analytics, Web Analytics Industry News | 3 Comments »
October 7, 2006
I got a remark this week from one of my possible future clients – doing a PoC, Proof of Concept for them – where he mentioned that it seemed actually quite difficult to introduce tags into the “application” we wanted to measure. The application was actually a Flash file and as far as Flash files go, yes, it’s a bit of a hassle but nothing really spectacular as long as you get all the little details right.
It’s actually quite funny how this question came back a couple of times lately and the answer to such a question remains invariably “it depends”. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not really complicated and as for any kind of task, it does require some preparation. I often compare it to cooking a dish: integrating the tags is like shopping for your ingredients. Once you’ve got all your ingredients in place, the fun part starts but without one particular ingredient, you might get your dish completly wrong. (more…)
Posted in Business Tips and Tricks, Google Analytics, Technical tips and tricks, Web Analytics, Web Analytics Industry News, WebTrends | 2 Comments »
October 1, 2006
Je ne comprends pas. Je suis désolée mais je n’y comprends rien. On peut m’expliquer?
Je n’ai pas pu m’empêcher de remarquer vendredi dernier les campagnes abribus de Carrefour et alors qu’en ce dimanche soir je surfais sur le site de la Biennale de Venise, suite à ma lecture mensuelle du Deco Idées, tout en écoutant RTL-TVi en attendant Pirates des Caraïbes, j’ai entendu la pub de Carrefour à la télé. Oui, l’info de type multi canal, je connais.
Rendez-vous donc sur www.lesfemmesaupouvoir.be. (more…)
Posted in Google Analytics, In French, Thoughts and Ideas, Web 2.0 | 5 Comments »
September 11, 2006
As René decided to watch 3 consecutive episodes of Lost on TF1, I was thinking about world peace, Bush and religion. In order to feed my hungry brain, I decided to scout on Google’s videos in order to find out what Madeleine Albright had been up to lately, as I read her latest book some weeks ago, and see how Web 2.0 applications had been tagged inside this application.
Sure enough, while doing a rapid search on “Madeleine Albright”, I stumpled upon an Interesting KPBS interview, where she unfortunately mainly discussed her first book, Madam Secretary. It was nonetheless interesting to scout around the Web 2.0 applications to the right while listening and posting comments and checking source codes to understand the way this could be measured.
Hungry for more I discovered something else called Fora TV. Fora TV is a free video streaming service with a discussion forum. While watching the video, the text of her speach scrolled down at the same rythm to the right of the video. Underneath, the registered user can post links related to the subject and post comments. This interactive experience made my evening!
Madeleine mentioned someone else in the first video: Shelly Lazarus, CEO of Ogilvy & Mather. Ogilvy has always been a cornerstone of advertising and about the only book I actually own regarding this sector. As a woman in her early 30s, I’m also on the look out for female role models in business. Hence the interest.
As I went through Shelly Lazarus’ bio, I stumbled upon an interesting quote: “She starts with the premise that a client does, indeed, emit a constant stream of messages about its products… If you are going to send out all these messages, she says, they all should work together whether at home or globally. That way when a potential customer receives one impression, it reinforces all the other ones that came before.” (more…)
Posted in About us, Thoughts and Ideas, Web 2.0, Web Analytics | 1 Comment »
September 5, 2006
I am back in the Dutch mountains (the place where I grew up is called Bergen, which literally means mountains in Dutch) for the sell of my mother’s house. It’s been a long week, filled with workshops (these really worn me out), eternal Kafkaian discussions with vendors, technical mishaps within clients environments and the bright light of our new ad campaigns that my husband is setting up with our Design team.
It’s funny like there’s rythm to following the blogs that are out there related to Web Analytics. I must admit that I have so much work that I don’t have the time to follow it all up but every once in a while, something gets my attention. There’s of course also René who feeds me with info, Siegert who surfs around on the more Dutch part of the WA domain, Guillaume who’s talking to the vendors about his technical issues and of course the daily Yahoo User Group newsletter.
There is just so much information lying out there on the field as well that I’m sort of in a kind of balance between looking at what’s going on in real life, in comparison with what I see on the blogs, user groups, web casts and products website or conferences.
The delay with which Europe also reacts often means that I’m faced with issues that have been discussed some time ago on the user group for example. I remember some months back the discussions about measurements of PPC and I’m finally in this situation for a client today.
So, I’ve been doing my research on the User Group, using the search and getting back to reading posts in more depth from some months ago. By the way, I wouldn’t dare to ask a question in the fear of being kindly reminded by Robin Steif that the question had already been asked. (more…)
Posted in Thoughts and Ideas, Web Analytics, Web Analytics Industry News | 4 Comments »
August 20, 2006
I got housted last week for a recent post on this blog, a situation I sincerely regret.
While driving home from the Dutch mountains, I was thinking about the terms used in this constructive critism and more specifically the term “WebTrends experts”.
As my team’s been heavily involved with the product for over 3 years now (it first landed on my desk over 6 years ago), I was wondering whether I’d use such an expression to describe my team. (more…)
Posted in About us, Thoughts and Ideas, Web Analytics, Web Analytics Industry News, WebTrends | 4 Comments »
May 19, 2006
After a not great week, I was cooling off in front of the 7:30 local news on the RTBF.
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 »
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.
- 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 »
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?
April 19, 2006
Because Siegert today was making fun of a new article on Clickz.com today entitled, The Ideal Web Analytics tool, I decided to take a look.
It’s indeed always funny to see such a title and then just underneath “sponsored by WebTrends”
I read the article and I agree. I’m trying to figure out what I love most.
” Ultimately, the real value lies in the ability to be able to gain insight into visitor and customer behaviour. This requires a number of things:
- the ability to quickly segment and looks at different groups of visitors and customers based on any number of criteria
- the ability to be able to aggregate and summarise data in a way that makes it easier to observe patterns and trends
- the ability to integrate site centric data with other data sources to get a holistic view of the customer“
Also tricky thing is that it doesn’t actually quote on WebTrends or it’s specific components but mostly shows the business requirements related to the use of a web analytics and how it should position itself within other channel related data.
I agree with the vision and the road ahead.
Looking forward to the journey.
Ah, yes, the article in itself, written by Neil Mason
Posted in Web Analytics, Web Analytics Industry News, WebTrends | Comments Off on WebTrends is also my (to become) favorite tool
April 19, 2006
As we @OX2 finished integrating WebTrends with our Content Management System, On[i]Sys some weeks ago, I was wondering if the same kind of reflection had been haunting other CMS vendors on my market.
I also got an interesting question from one my new clients regarding integration between DreamWeaver and WebTrends and found that indeed, something had existed. More on http://www.macromedia.com/devnet/dreamweaver/articles/webtrends.html
Anyhow, I moved on and typed into Google "Tridion" & "WebTrends", looking not only for possible integrations but also remembering that some time ago, a Tridion client told me about Tridion developping it's own Web Analytics solution and what I thought about it.
Well, to be quite honnest, I didn't know about it and wouldn't actually care less.
As an enterpreneur, I know how important it is to stick to what you know.
For those who know me, it's quite obvious I'm the "best of breed" kind of person. T
hat also explains for me why we chose for WebTrends in terms of Web Analytics solutions – amongst others such as Google Analytics.
Anyhow, getting back to Tridion and WebTrends in Google, top result is: http://www.tridion.com/Company/Careers/read.asp?component_id=10210.
By the way, for those who might tell me this is old, the publication date can be found in the source code (unless Tridion goes through an entire publication process for all content over and over again, which I doubt: it's not optimal and useless) and thus the publication date states <meta name="DC.Date.X-MetadataLastModified" content="2006/04/11 14:28:51"/>. Interesting meta: answers one of my clients questions of last week: who publishes content & at which frequency?
I'm diverting again.
The point is that Tridion is recruiting an Online Marketeer for Amsterdam.
And the Roles and Responsabilities of the Online Marketeer will be "Measure online effectiveness using web analytics tools like Webtrends."
Thanks guys for supporting my view related to WebTrends.
And let me know if there is more to Tridion & WebTrends, will you? or Web Analytics as a matter of fact. Can't seem to get results from your Search unfortunately 😦
Posted in Web Analytics, WebTrends | 4 Comments »
March 30, 2006
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…)
Posted in Thoughts and Ideas | Comments Off on What does the CAC40 really stand for?
March 27, 2006
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…)
Posted in Events, Thoughts and Ideas, Web Analytics | Comments Off on Search & Measure, San Marco village 24/3/2006 (I. End User perspective)
March 26, 2006
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…)
Posted in Events, Thoughts and Ideas, Web Analytics, Web Analytics Industry News | Comments Off on Search & Measure, San Marco village 24/3/2006 (II. Vendors)
March 11, 2006
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…)
Posted in Thoughts and Ideas, Web Analytics, Web Analytics Industry News, WebTrends | Comments Off on Launch Update: WebTrends Marketing Lab Webcast
March 11, 2006
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…)
Posted in Thoughts and Ideas, Web Analytics | Comments Off on Of course they are biased, so are you. Get over it!
March 6, 2006
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…)
Posted in About us, Thoughts and Ideas | Comments Off on Women, technology and web analytics blogging
VS 
Siegert planted the scene related to our attendance of the 
OX2 Web Analytics Blog 