It’s always a pleasure to go to the eMetrics summits and hear from Brett Crosby what’s new and what Google has been working on in a very concise way. 15 minutes tops, crystal clear and true value for your money 😉
Last eMetrics in Washington, Google announced the launch of Google Website Optimizer. This time around, they are pushing a bit further by rolling out some very exciting features and holding true to their word to continuous support of their Urchin software version.
I’m pretty sure Julien will comment further about these new features. Let me just announce the big steps. So, what’s new with Google Analytics?
In a nutshell:
Internal site search
Event tracking of Web 2.0 Rich Internet Apps
Outbound link tracking (TAGLESS!)
Optional new GA.js code
Urchin software from Google in beta version, only sold through GAACs.
Getting a bit deeper into the different features, Internal Site Search will show you the who, what & where of your internal search module. Reports will include time spent after search & reports of what happens afterwards. You can tie this back to your goal conversions and your e-commerce. I already know of a couple of clients who are going to be utterly thrilled with that!
Event tracking of Web 2.0 apps will allow you to track RIA in Ajax, Flash, Silverlight & Air and it will not inflate artificially your page views. It’s based on an event hierarchy of objects, action & label. Your object can for example be your player, the actions the buttons you use such as play, pause, etc. and the label will displays the name of the content.In your reports, you’ll be able to cross segment this with your other data such as geography for example.
As mentioned, outbound links will be tracked without additional use of tags. Gosh, that’s going to make life soooo much easier!
If you want to be able to use those 2 last features mentioned, you’ll have to update you code to include the new GA.js tag. It will also allow you to automatically detect SSL/HTTPS so that won’t be an issue anymore. Thank you very much! The new tag uses object-oriented code so it’s more compact and faster. And as a the cherry topping the cake, if you switch over from your urchin to your new GA code, EpikOne’s SiteScan is at your disposal, for free! Yeah!
Last but not least, Urchin software from Google is out in beta version, sold only by GAACs. It’s the software version that supports both page tagging and classic log files (if you still need that) and the good thing is that you can have both GA & Urchin running with a single tag. Urchin software from Google will therefore allow you to reprocess data and audit your raw logs if needed.
In terms of pricing, it’s a single fee of 2.995$, including all modules. It’s free if you’ve bought advanced support and if you didn’t, don’t worry: we will apply what you paid for moving from Urchin 5 up to Urchin 6.
So, on that note, thank you Brett, Google and the entire fabulous Google Analytics people working on this great product. And last but not least, happy birthday Avinash!
Here’s the video that we sent for the BarCamp event last week-end in Buenos Aires. I was requested to speak about the state of Web analytics in Europe and give some examples of things that we were doing with Web Analytics for our clients. As you can hear it’s in Spanish.
This year, attendance at OMD, the Online Marketing conference held in Düsseldorf, was expected to top last year’s 6000 attendees — but I think everyone was surprised by the 11.000 who registered!
And for much of Tuesday, it seemed as though they were all blocking the aisles between me at the next seminar I wanted to attend or booth I wanted to visit.
Naturally, the web analytics vendors were represented — Omniture, WebTrends, Nedstat, Visual Sciences — though they all had smaller booths since for them, it’s a “must be there to show your face” kind of event, not one where prospects really coming looking for you. Google had a huge presence, and at least one or two of the GA folks where at their booth, but you couldn’t find them among the 50(!) other Googlers who were wearing brightly-colored T-shirts and chatting with everyone who came by. (more…)
This 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…)
I 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! 😀
It’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:
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.
– 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…).
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.
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…)
“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…)
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.
Now that Eric has posted about this in the Web Analytics Yahoo Groups, I can share with you that the next 14th of September, during our Web Analytics Day, Ian Thomas, responsible of the Microsoft Gatineau project, will be doing the first public demo of the Bêta version of Gatineau.
If you’re in the Web Analytics Industry, you already know about Gatineau as many Blogs (including ours) have been talking about this product these past months. If you’re not familiar with it, Gatineau is the future FREE Web Analytics tool of Microsoft. So a competitor of Google Analytics.
This is exciting, my little Web Analytics Business Unit could’t be happier with the upcoming Web Analytics Day to be held on September the 14th in Brussels!
We had some experience setting-up a Web Analytics Day back in 2005 and managed, in those early days to get almost 100 people to listen to what we had to say during workshops and conferences. This time around, man oh man, it’s going to be a ball!
Some of my favorite speakers are coming: Eric Peterson to talk about process!, KPIs & Web 2.0. Wandering Dave Rhee to discuss his favorite subject: Social Networks! and last but not least, the World Federation of Advertisers with its very own Stephan Loerke to discuss how Advertisers are becoming Accountable.
And it’s not all because we’re also going to let the vendors show off in order to fill you in on what they’ve been up to and how they see Web Analytics evolving. Omniture‘s going to surely show off Genesis while WebTrends will be presenting Marketing Lab 2 (ML² for those familiar with the topic), IndexTools‘ wonderful Dennis Mortensen will certainly crack a joke while assuring you his solution is the most cost effective one and flegmatic Ian Thomas from Microsoft will also be emphasizing his view upon Web Analytics… and free tools. In addition we have also Nedstat, the biggest Dutch Web Analytics vendor who will be represented by Krist Verhelle and finally Extenseo, the leading SEO company in Belgium that will speak about Web Analytics & SEO.
But don’t forget, it’s also about the networking, about asking the questions you’ve always wondered about but were afraid to ask or blog about!
René’s in charge of food & cocktails so you can be sure all this exciting knowledge will be graciously floating on top of your cocktails. Hopefully, he’ll even think about the chocolates!
This is really a day about knowledge, about getting the most out of the online channel and the challenge we’ve all been embracing for many years now, building up an accountable society.
Join us, challenge us! Without you, we couldn’t made this wonderful European Dream Team happend!
Looking forward to meeting you on Friday the 14th of September at the Federation of Entreprises of Belgium. More information: www.webanalyticsday.eu.
For those of you who won’t be able to attend our Web Analytics Day the next September 14th, you can nevertheless attend Eric Peterson Presentation ‘Web Analytics is easy!’ through a Web analytics Association Webcast that will take place on August 29th. Please note that this exclusive event is open to WAA members only: another good reason to become a member 😉
This unique day is intended for practitioners in Web Analytics wanting to increase their knowledge in the subject. Eric and Aurélie along with Stephan Loerke, Managing Director of the World Federation of Advertisers and David Rhee, Web Analytics Director at Gateway Computers will share with you their knowledge around Web Analytics. This is your perfect chance to learn all you need to know to get started efficiently in your Web Analytics Journey. Register today!
You can register directly (seats are limited) on www.WebAnalyticsDay.eu. You can also find hereafter the agenda of that event.
The 7th of May, when we were attending the Emetrics Summit in San francisco, Jeremiah interviewed us for his Video Show: Web Strategy.
We discuss wuth Jeremiah around different topics as: web agencies, niche interactive agencies, full service agencies, Web Analytics and accountability.
Despite the jetlag we managed to make some sense 😉
Well here is as promised a preview of the Four Gurus For You Session that took place last may in San Francisco during the Emetrics Summit. As you might know the International Committee of the Web Analytics Association organized an online event during the Emetrics Summit. This session intended to the WAA members that couldn’t attend Emetrics presented the 4 most renowned Gurus in Web Analytics answering questions from people attending the event (even virtually).
Very shortly Brian will publish over an hour of video in the WAA website. Access to the videos will be granted only to WAA members, so here’s a good reason to become a member! For about 100 euros per year, you will have the opportunity to pick the brains of these 4 Gurus and learn what are their views in Web Analytics.
On the goship side, you will see for example Avinash throwing his mobile and even hurting himself with the table.
Don’t miss this opportunity and become a member of the WAA today! And if you like this kind of stuff, please state that it was one of the reasons you joined the WAA (we’ll make some more if there’s enough positive feed-back).
René
P.S. I haven’t selected this excerpt because it was my question, well in part only 😉 ; but also because it explains the 10/20/70 rule that Eric has explained in details recently in his Blog.
I’ve been all over Europe lately, scouting out Web Analytics talent, as anyone in the sector looking to hire and push forward this great line of work we’re all in aka Web Analytics. I have to admit that my home country, the Netherlands, had never been really high on the list, for several reasons. I won’t go into that.
To my astonishment, I did however witness last week during the “Eerste Nederlandse Webanalyticscongres” some high level activity going on over there and already blogged a couple of days ago about Postbank as banking remains close to my heart.
I did want to go into what I learned from an interesting guy called Bert Wiggers, who’s reponsible for different websites such as www.nu.nl, www.overzicht.nl and the topic of this post, www.kieskeurig.nl.
We arrived late last night in Zeist, an even smaller town than the place I grew up in the North of Holland, and had a nice chat with Eric before heading for a good night’s sleep. I must admit that I’m running under 5 to maximum 6 hours of sleep per night lately but hey, can’t commplain, I didn’t have to get up at 4:30 this morning like Dennis‘ fine Indextools.
Lack of sleep is partially my own fault as I’m into some readings and tend to forget the time but also because I’m working on a couple of projects in one of my favorite sectors, banking. As some of you might know, my background is partially in banking and insurance (Swiss Life and Deutsche Bank) so I felt compeled to blog after the fine presentation I saw this morning by Jos Verwoerd from Postbank here at the Webanalytics Congres in Zeist (The Netherlands). Also note that his presentation was made by his co-workers, amongst which he cited Ewout Vis, who’s holding a workshop this afternoon that I’ll also be attending. I’m afraid I didn’t catch the name of the other guy but I’m sure we’ll have some interesitng discussions this afternoon. (more…)
WebSideStory will no longer exist. Bob Chatham announced at Emetrics San Francisco a couple of weeks ago, that the nice brand WebSideStory would no longer exist, but don’t be afraid, the company hasn’t closed, it’s just that it changes its name to Visual Sciences, to better reflect the new positioning of the company.
Last year, at Emetrics Washington Bob did already a very interesting presentation explaining the positioning of WSS after VS acquisition: going towards ‘Customer Analytics’. Back then, Bob explained how Web Analytics would enlarge it’s scope from simply Web analytics to Customer Analytics going through Internet Channel Analytics and Multi-Channel Analytics. I remember that this presentation was really inspiring; Aurélie and I were very excited with this new overture in Web Analytics and by Eric’s private demo of Visual Sciences. For those of you who aren’t familiar with Visual Sciences, you may read a couple of posts that Aurélie wrote following Emetrics Washington 2006:
As you might have read on the Yahoo Groups, Eric Peterson is paying us a visit at the end of this month (he’s attending a Web Analytics Congres in The Netherlands). As Aurélie and I will be joining Eric during that week-end we thought it would be interesting to organize a diner in Amsterdam on Friday the 1st of June. This diner is open to anyone interested in Web Analytics willing to spend some time with us. The attendees will have the opportunity not only to meet with Eric, but also to have a discussion about the European figures of the Web Analytics Survey he has made recently (read the US figures here).
So if you care to join us, please send me (rdo AT ox2 DOT be) or Eric an e-mail so we can book a restaurant for this occasion (please do so ASAP as we want to make sure to be able to accommodate everybody).
Before the Emetrics Robbin Steif launched the great idea to make a table (or more) with Bloggers on Monday the 7th, so after the keynote speaches and morning presentations, Aurélie and I went to join Robbin as promised. The table in which we sat was too small to allow all of us to be in one table, but nevertheless we crunched as sardines to allow a maximum of us to join (we were 12 in table for 8 people).
I remember Ian Thomas complaining (joking) that there wasn’t room for him, but we then crunched again to make some more room.
From my right here is the list of people that was sited on our table:
I had brought my camera with me and I did a few video of our conversations. And Chris had been doing his homework and brought questions for the rest of us. Thanks Chris, this was a great idea!
Watch the 20 minutes of discussion (uncensored!)…:(more…)
During Emetrics San Francisco I had the opportunity to visit Google (I’ll blog about that in the coming days) and to have a look at the alpha version of Gatineau. This made me want to emphasize and explain our Code of Ethics as independent consultants.
But before I get into that let’s explain a little bit more: (more…)
Finally home and settled in after a very long week in San Francisco. Still a bit jet lagged and Bruno was nice enough to remind me this morning that per hour difference, I should count on 1 full day to get used to European timing again so I’m figuring that within 7 days, all should be fine again with my internal clock. One only hopes! as I’m leaving for London again next week.
First of all, it’s been a fabulous experience in San Fran thanks to the likes of Jim, Avinash and of course Eric. Truely this experience beats my last 29th birthday for the 2nd time, when I decided to hop over to Shangai to check out the scenary in China some 5 years ago. Having 500 people singing happy birthday to you and one of the major Web Analytics gurus taking time out of his presentation to put “that poor woman on stage” is a memory I’ll always cherish. Thank you for that, for your support and dedication to this passionate field. I’m sure we’ll all experience some very interesting times ahead and I’m really looking forward to future collaborations. (more…)
If you attended Emetrics, chances are that you heard about the Lobby Bar and that you have attended to one of the sessions.
The concept is rather simple, every night after dinner, people meet at the Lobby Bar (the bar of the Hotel). I have to admit that I’m a huge fan of this and this week I attended all the sessions from Saturday night to friday night.
It’s great to network with other Industry professionals and we really have all the profiles (Vendors, Consultants, Practitioners, and of course our Godfather).
At San Francisco, as the Hotel bar was closing at midnight, we continued the reunion in a bar just across the street that hopefully stayed open until 2am.
I warmly encourage the attendees of future Emetrics Summits to join us at the Bar 😉
Thursday night, after having a wonderful dinner at a Brazilian restaurant with Andrea, Jim, Matthew and Aurélie we launched a new concept: the last day at the Lobby Bar it’s chocolates time! But not any chocolates: Belgian Marcolini’s chocolates! I’m sure that all that attended our wedding have memories arising (Mmmm Marcolini!)
So I guess that as from now on I’ll have to get some belgian chocolates to end each Summit we attend 😉
On Friday night Aurélie and I seem to be the only ones left at the Hotel, so after a great dinner at a Japanese restaurant, we went to the Bar to have our last drink before going to bed as we had to catch up an early flight on saturday morning and get back to our normal life.
This is the blog of WebAnalytics.be, a Business Unit of OX2, a pan-European Interactive Agency based in Bussels capital of Europe.
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’s always a pleasure to go to the eMetrics summits and hear from Brett Crosby what’s new and what Google has been working on in a very concise way. 15 minutes tops, crystal clear and true value for your money 😉
Last but not least, Urchin software from Google is out in beta version, sold only by GAACs. It’s the software version that supports both page tagging and classic log files (if you still need that) and the good thing is that you can have both GA & Urchin running with a single tag. Urchin software from Google will therefore allow you to reprocess data and audit your raw logs if needed.
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