I just spotted this video on YouTube. A conversation between Jeremiah and Jim regarding the state of the Web Analytics Industry recorded earlier this year.
If you haven’t been able to attend an eMetrics Summit yet, this will allow you to see Jim at work explaining very clearly his vision about Web Analytics.
If you’re not familiar about Web Analytics, after viewing this you will understand what Web Analytics is about. You will learn how Web Analytics can change your online business and thus affect the bottom line of your company.
You’ll see that you have a bonus discussion as you get a second discussion between Jeremiah and Jim about how to measure campaigns starting at the 16th minute.
After my presentation at the eMetrics in Washington, I was approached by an off shore company specialised in data analysis based in India. Or at least, that’s what I thought it was, during our first encounter.
I had already noted the little black note books lying on the tables of the big hall where the keynotes were held and thought to myself that it was good timing as my third Google note book – which fits into my handbag – was already full. But the name of the company did not ring a bell even though the tag lines “data analysis – technology services” spiked my curiosity.
So, when the guy from Theorem actually came up to me, it rang a bell and I wasn’t really surprised by the idea of outsourcing data analysis to an off shore country. India seems the logical step as we had already discussed such possibilities of future evolution within the Web Analytics industry, when he was first approached by a couple of Indian guys some months ago. (more…)
When René barged into our bedroom some 72 hours ago with my laptop in his hand, announcing Greg Drew’s departure from WebTrends, we finally understood why his name had been popping-up on searches to our blog for the last 24 hours in such an abnormal way.
I had thought Greg already looked tired when we briefly met in Washington and attributed that logically to the Road shows that WebTrends was holding, following its August release of the long awaited Marketing Lab² (ML²).
On the other hand, this news also reminded me of some discussions we had back in the spring in San Francisco with some WebTrends folks about the need for a refreshing touch within WebTrends in order to get past the very bad feeling we all shared about the first release of Marketing Lab. All partners we talked to were anxiously waiting – for far too long, I really want to stress that – for a more advanced release that would bring true added value to our existing clients. With ML1, this was clearly not the case.
So, let’s get back to WebTrends news as some more information has been published online regarding it’s top management changes.
The first thing that seems clear now is that Greg Drew and the other three VPs were asked to leave by the Board of WebTrends.
Bruce T. Coleman, who has become the interim CEO, knows WebTrends very well as he was member of the Board since 1998. So even if he has no experience in Web Analytics operations, my feeling is that he understands very well the sector and he has got some ideas for the future.
Coleman has also extensive experience in running technology companies and thus we can expect some changes in the coming months. From public declarations of their CMO Tim Kopp:
“The company has been doing great. We’re driving double-digit growth. But we believe we can continue to do better and the board wanted to make a change to help accelerate growth“.
So the objective is to increase growth and this seems to be the main reason of the management changes. This was corroborated by Bruce Coleman who stated:
“We need to get more new deals, this is a company that’s growing, but not growing as much as the marketplace. Given the investments, [the owners] want to see more of a return.” (more…)
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!
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:
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.
The Friday following Emetrics, while Aurélie was attending the Predictive Analytics two day course, I was invited by Avinash to visit him at Google. I have to admit that I was pretty excited with the idea to visit Google’s offices as I didn’t attend the GAAC training in Dublin. So after a nice breakfast with Matthew and Jim I took a cab and went ahead to Mountain-view.
I had a taximan from Morocco that while driving was always looking to the back as we were having a very engaged discussion about the political situation of his country (in a Arabic influenced french). I have to admit that I regret to have launched the conversation as when we arrived at the highway I was afraid that we would get into an accident. But fortunately I got safe to Google’s HQ (a bit shaky I have to admit ;-)). (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:
I’ve been playing around with blog stats in order to gauge interest and readership of the different posts we’ve rolled out over the past year and wanted to share some reflections. These findings and ideas thus stem from a simple copy-paste of blog stats for the last 365 days of this blog. I actually did this following a question asked by Chris Gemignani at the Emetrics’ blogger table about our blogging voice and if we had trouble finding it.
I do.
Maybe because I share this blog with my husband and the rest of my team.
Maybe just because I’m not always certain what people are actually interested in reading and how I could best optimise the time they graciously share with us by reading this blog.
And certainly because there are some wonderful Web analytics bloggers out there (too many to name and please watch René’s next blog post on the bloger table to get a list of very fine and smart people talking about fascinating Web Analytics related things).
So, in order to reach out to my blogging voice (again), I fist stumbled upon a post René wrote more than a year ago intitled “Why this blog?”.
The last 2 paragraphs are of interest and actually still apply and I will not comment on my waking up my husband at 2 AM… It goes like this
“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.”
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.
Aurélie and I just got back home after filling in a complaint for lost luggage at the airport… (thanks American Airlines). So we are back in our little Brussels and it’s great to be home, the birds sing this Sunday morning (home sweet home).
This morning, here at Emetrics we had a great panel session with THE 4 most important Web Analytics Gurus (Jim, Bryan, Eric & Avinash). We had over 40 people joining the session from around the world that could not only follow the discussion, but also send questions. The international attendees are members of the Web Analytics Association as this was a members only session (in addition to the lucky ones that were present in San Francisco).
Jime Sterne, Bryan Eisenberg, Vicky Brock, Eric T. Peterson, Brian Induni & Avinash Kaushik.
Thanks to the WAA and specially to Vicky and Brian without whom this wouldn’t have happened (and thank you Lars for coming up with the name of this online event ;-)).
This event was recorded, so if you want to have access to it in the coming weeks, you just need to do one thing: BECOME MEMBER OF THE WAA!
I’ll be posting a little ‘chupachups’ video in the coming days of this session and publish all the questions that were adressed from the attendees (physically and virtually), you’ll see all the answers from this great minds in the members section of the WAA website.
Google has just announced here in San Francisco the release of the Version 2 of Google Analytics. We are very excited at OX2 as we have been testing this new version since a bit more than a month now. As you know part of our Web analytics team attended the GAAC training in Dublin a couple of months ago and they also got trained on this new version.
It is radically different from the current version and incorporates great new features (I love the big bounce rate percentage and the export functionnalities have really been improved). I won’t enter into details right now as you know I’m not an Analyst (as I like to say, I’m just the sales guy ;-)).
Julien will be publishing in the coming hours a post about this new version! And we will publish more insights in the coming days/weeks.
So if you’re using Google analytics expect a radical change (but don’t worry there will be a transition period in which you will still be able to use the previous interface).
I have to admit that for Aurélie and I it wasn’t a big surprise as we were in the secret since a couple of months now when Eric contacted us to propose Aurélie to join his Board of Advisors (Nevertheless, Aurélie got her surprise as before starting his presentation Eric took her on stage and sang Happy Birthday to her -she just turned 29 for the sixth time yesterday- along with the 500 attendees – I’ll post a little video about this ;-)). I remember the day he sent us an email asking us to have a chat with him over Skype. Back then, we were really surprised by his future move and pretty honored to be not only among the firsts to know his secret but also his will to have Aurélie to join his Board of Advisors (thank you Eric, we will always be grateful for your trust and confidence).
So what is it all this about, what Eric plans to do? What are his objectives? What’s his company positioning?
Eric has created his company around what he calls ‘The Truth About Web Analytics”: (more…)
For those of you who do not know Jim Sterne (Who doesn’t know Jim Sterne?), I like to call him the Godfather of Web Analytics. In the WA Industry you have Gurus, Vendors, Consultants and Practitionners, but only one Godfather and that’s Jim Sterne (if you want a proof just view this).
Jim has been in the Web Analytics since it exists. He has not only written about it (you may read for example a very interesting White Paper he wrote in 2000 with Matt Cutler or buy one of his books at Amazon). He has also been the creator and responsible of the Emetrics Summit, the must attend event around Web Analytics that happens 4 times a year (Mmmm, rumors say that he will expanding his operations shortly, so keep up visiting http://www.emetrics.org). The Emetrics Summit are 2 to 3 days events that take place in the US and Europe allowing Web Analytics professionals not only to attend astonishing and outstanding presentation, but also network in order to exchange ideas and points of view.
Jim’s views on the Web Analytics team:
Last Year, during his keynote speach, Jim described the different competences needed in a Web Analytics team: (more…)
A first version of this post has been hanging in the ‘draft’ section since the week after I came back from the Emetrics in London (29-30 March 2007), but as I’ve been quite busy and I actually reached my 3 outcomes since 2 weeks only (since our WAW in Brussels), I feel it is now the time to publish it.
A chance to win Jim Sterne’s Markting Optimization Library made me help to set all the work aside and finish this post as well. You never know 😉 (What do you think Jim? You think I get nominated?)
Let me start by explaining the concept of the 3 outcomes.
Like last year, between presentations, there was the time for a roundtable discussion. Last year one of the discussions was about Web Analytics KPIs, and this year was quite similar. But instead of thinking about the succes factors that need to be measured for a web site, this time you had think about the personal objectives you wanted to meet by attending the Emetrics. Kind of your personal summit KPIs. In addition, these outcomes had to fulfill some criteria, and I quote:
Each of your outcomes will be effective when they meet the following criteria.
S – Specific (the What, Why and How)
M – Measurable
A – Attainable
R – Realistic
T – Timely
S.M.A.R.T. outcomes emphasize what you want, rather than what you don’t want.
So here we go with my personal outcomes of this years Emetrics London: (more…)
Raphael Nolens invited us into a cycling journey into Web Analytics in Düsseldorf, playfully showing us the stages Pioneer Europe went through in order to fully reap the benefits of the online channel today.
It all started out with a leap back in the past where ever since 1996, Pioneer Europe had been going through redesign projects, year after year. Faced with different cultures and quality issues – some sites were down for half a day before anyone actually noticed, which was acceptable at the time – Pioneer decided to set up a European Web Governance Team back in 2001.
The fixing of the leaking buckets started with performance issues, as the websites where too slow. In 2002, 12 new websites where released, running under a single centralised database and a homogeneous web design, across all countries.
Since then, Rafael has been working hard to improve the Internet presence through a continuous improvement cycle.
The challenge mainly relied in the fact that international companies are not organised to work together. That’s where the bicycles started to show up: you have to peddle hard and together, working as a team. A sprinter does not hold the same responsibilities as team members trying to push their team leader across the finish line.
In the light of non aligned strategies across countries, pan European companies tend to follow different strategies ranging from DIY to zeppelins that gobble up a lot of euros, are highly inflammable and need to be rebuilt each year.
Pioneer saw this differently and more specifically in the light of small & effective ways of spending those euros sensibly. Like climbing up a curved road zigzagging through, assuring that onward movement, brought by your team of climbers and sprinters. And indeed, as Avinash would say, small is beautiful 😉(more…)
I love Europe! I couldn’t say it enough and it’s kind of encrypted into my genes, being Dutch, French-speaking, living in Belgium and managing OX2’s Web Analytics business unit while my Spanish husband, René, takes care of the rest, the Interactive Agency.
Yes, honey, the hotel is fine and I’m so sorry, I missed your birthday but I promise, I’ll make it up. Trust me when I say that there are some Michelin stars restaurants you haven’t tried yet 😉
So, that’s for my personal message home. Please feel free to come up to me in Düsseldorf if you know of some good places to eat. I usually we ar green and even though I do not have dreadlocks, one could say I’m dressed rather casual 😉 Because that’s what the Emetrics Summits are actually all about: Networking! (more…)
As Jim has been following my tip of keeping it up with the videos, I thought the minimum I could do, was to present them here in our Blog, as we have done with the previous ones 😉 So here go:
This first video is about the second day of the Emetrics in London. And if you pay attention around 1 minute and 34 seconds you will see the belgian table represented by Siegert Dierickx (OX2), Michaël Notté (Toyota Motor Europe) and Aurélie and I discussing about something I can’t recall (if I had to remember everything Aurélie tells me…).
This second video arrived just today. It’s a little wrap up as Jim says.
Thanks Jim for these videos, I’m sure they help to keep the spirit of the events 😉
For those of you who haven’t read yet Avinash’s Reflections on Emetrics London 2007: READ THEM NOW!
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.
After my presentation at the 
Bruce T. Coleman, who has become the interim CEO, knows WebTrends very well as he was member of the Board since 1998. So even if he has no experience in Web Analytics operations, my feeling is that he understands very well the sector and he has got some ideas for the future.
It’s always a pleasure to go to the 
Last but not least, Urchin software from Google is out in beta version, sold only by 
It’s becoming a little tradition to fly over to the US to attend the 
Last year, at Emetrics Washington Bob did already 
I’ve been playing around with blog stats in order to gauge interest and readership of the different posts we’ve rolled out over the past year and wanted to share some reflections. These findings and ideas thus stem from a simple copy-paste of blog stats for the last 365 days of this blog. I actually did this following a question asked by 
During 
Finally home and settled in after a very long week in 
If you attended 
Fresh news from San Francisco!!!!
For those of you who do not know Jim Sterne (Who doesn’t know Jim Sterne?), I like to call him the Godfather of Web Analytics. In the WA Industry you have Gurus, Vendors, Consultants and Practitionners, but only one Godfather and that’s Jim Sterne (if you want a proof 
A first version of this post has been hanging in the ‘draft’ section since the week after I came back from the Emetrics in London (29-30 March 2007), but as I’ve been quite busy and I actually reached my 3 outcomes since 2 weeks only (since our 
Are you attending Emetrics in San Francisco next week? Please don’t forget to make Jim happy:
Raphael Nolens invited us into a 
OX2 Web Analytics Blog 