So you had all heard the news and many of us blogged about it right away: Omniture acquired Visual Sciences for an amount equal to half the GDP of a small African country, but I digress 😉
The convenient truth (that no one in the world of vendor partners will admit to) is this: it’s going to be a hell of a lot easier to market SiteCatalyst-class and Discover-class solutions, without having to have our clients choose between Omniture and Visual Sciences.
Let us look in detail at the new array of solutions being offered by the Jolly Green Giant (ho ho ho):
“Traditional” Omniture solutions:
Omniture SiteCatalyst: with version 14 coming soon, this is undoubtedly the established standard for web analytics reporting. No surprise here.
Omniture Discover: the Java-based 3D data exploration module that makes web data mining a breeze (notice how I bolded ‘web data’)
Omniture Genesis: the hub module that ties together data from other solution partners for integration into SiteCatalyst
Omniture TouchClarity: the BT (behavioral targeting) module
Omniture Offermatica: the MVT (multi variable testing) module
Omniture SearchCenter: the bid management tool (to bid on keyword auctions)
Rebranded former Visual Sciences solutions:
HBX becomes… *drumroll* … SiteCatalyst HBX! As you can imagine, Omniture will no longer take on new HBX clients but will support existing customers until they eventually migrate to “regular” SiteCatalyst.
Visual Site, Visual Sale, Visual Bid and Visual Search… Wellthey’re going the way of HBX so wait and see…
Visual Workstation becomes … Discover On Premises! So far, everyone I have talked to agrees that the rebranding is misleading. Discover On Premises suggests that the product offers the same exploration capabilities as “regular” Discover but with the ability to host the solution in-house. Now when I bolded “web data” earlier, it was to emphasize the fact that Discover On Premises handles all sorts of marketing information: both web and offline data.
What about Platform 5 you ask? that’ s a question for a follow-up post 🙂
In the meantime, please leave your consitructive comments at the beep 🙂
If you haven’t read about them yet, I suggest you take a look at Anil Batra‘s interviews of web analysts.
In the latest installment, our own David “Wandering Dave” Rhee answers Anil’s questions.
Excerpts:
What are the major challenges you are facing in this industry?
I think the entire industry is at a point where our ability to analyze goes beyond the ability of the tools to deliver unified data in a cost-effective manner. In other words, we can imagine many different data sets we’d like to correlate, but only very few of us can get the various data sources to play nicely with each other without spending an inordinate amount of time, effort, and money, most of which we don’t have access to.
Beyond that, most organizations aren’t yet at the point where they know how to take advantage of the insights web analytics, or rather, an analytics-framed mindset, can offer. As a consultant, I see mos firms struggling to implement a tool correctly, and after that, maybe to figure out some truly useful KPIs, then do some basic campaign analysis. Few organizations are at the point where multi-channel measurement is common, or where web analytics is used to help allocate marketing spend most effectively, or where true ROI is being captured, and good business decisions made accordingly.
Web analytics will mature as an industry, but part of that means that the skill sets will become better defined and more widespread, so that any firm that really needs an analyst will be able to hire one. Beyond that, web analytics and business intelligence will merge in terms of an aggressive approach to data analysis being applied to many areas of an organization — not just their web site, or even their online marketing, but all of the marketing, production, sales, and other operations. It’s neither easy nor cheap to get there, but I’m sure that those firms which can execute well on an analytics vision will certainly see unparalleled success.
A few months back, during our Web Analytics Day, Eric Peterson kept me mesmerized with his iPhone and I started counting the days when it would be made available in Europe. Then again, I gave in and visited an Apple Store while vacationing in the U.S. but that’s another story 😉
Anyway, as the Apple iPhone is gradually being launched across Europe (and eventually across the rest of the world), this phone is undoubtedly positioned as an ideal high-tech Xmas present, much to the pleasure of AT&T, O2, Orange and other telcos who signed exclusivity deals with Apple 🙂
No matter the take one may have on the topic of Apple’s marketing strategy, it is undeniable that the iPhone has left its footprint in the Web ecosystem. If only to comply with the excitement/hype/craze, quite a few sites have decided to make a copy of their site available for the iPhone. The first sign of the creation and adoption of iPhone-specific content can be seen in most web analytics tools, in which the market share for the Safari browser increases… but not linked to PCs or Macs! This increase in traffic, although somewhat modest, is an indication that Time Magazine’s gadget of the year is indeed an ideal portable Internet access terminal, with high usability and user friendliness.
Another telltale sign of iPhone activity is revealed in the screen resolutions report: check for a resolution of 320×396 pixels and bam! that’s iPhone traffic for you.
As you can imagine, the integrated Safari browser provides for a totally new web browsing experience for a mobile device with one major difference with other technologies: the iPhone does not provide you with access to mobile-specific web content but rather gives you access to mobile web content. (more…)
Orange, le distributeur officiel de l’iPhone en France doit se frotter les mains car l’exclusivité qu’il a récemment signée avec Apple lui assure de faire de l’iPhone un super cadeau de Noël high-tech.
En effet, même s’il n’est arrivé officiellement en France que depuis quelques semaines, l’iPhone d’Apple a vraiment apposé son empreinte sur le Web depuis sa sortie aux USA au mois de juin. C’est particulièrement notable dans les rapports de nos outils de reporting préférés, où la part du navigateur Safari augmente… mais pas sur Mac ou PC 🙂
Ceci est le premier d’une série de bilets sur les Indicateurs Clés de Performance (en anglais Key Performance Indicators ou KPI) que vous retrouverez dans la version française du livre d’Eric Peterson,The Big Book of KPIs.
Chacun des indicateurs sera présenté de la manière suivante:
Introduction: présentation rapide de l’indicateur
Définition: définition et méthode de mesure de l’indicateur
Présentation: comment présenter cet indicateur au sein d’autres rapports?
Attente: à quelles valeurs faut-il s’attendre? comment étalonner l’indicateur?
Action: comment traduire et indicateur en actions concrètes pour optimiser votre site?
Les mentions en gras et italique font référence à d’autres indicateurs décrit dans le livre.
Nous commençons donc cette série avec le coût moyen par visiteur:
Coût moyen par visiteur
Les coûts d’acquisition de visiteurs peuvent parfois atteindre des proportions astronomiques si on n’y fait pas attention. Si le contrôle de ces coûts est difficile, il porte ses fruits sur le long terme.
Définition
Le coût moyen par visiteur est fonction des sommes engagées pour l’acquisition de trafic et peut se définir ainsi: (more…)
Après une petite pause au soleil bien méritée, notre équipe Web Analytics tenait à vous faire part d’une bonne nouvelle qui fait un peu calendrier de l’Avent: vous allez très bientôt pouvoir profiter de la version française du livre The Big Book of Key Performance Indicators d’Eric T. Peterson! Nous sommes en phase finale de traduction et son titre en français sera: La Bible des Indicateurs Clé de Performance (KPI)
En effet, grâce au fait qu’Eric est devenu actionnaire d’OX2 (en sus du partenariat avec sa société Web Analytics Demystified), nous mettrons très bientôt ce livre en version française disponibilité au format PDF et… nous vous donnerons même un avant-goût de ce livre en vous faisant partager quelques-uns de ces indicateurs grâce à notre blog d’ici la fin de l’année.
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…)
After the acquisition of Visual Sciences, we all wonder how Web Analytics vendors will react. So let’s get back to the different vendors out there and try to take a look at the future.
If we take the latest Forrester Research regarding Web Analytics that Megan Burns wrote a few months ago, which you can download here at Unica’s website, we find the main Web Analytics vendors well represented. Here’s a graph that sums up Megan’s findings:
The 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…)
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…)
Alan Boydell of Google Analytics France first pointed me to this nifty little tool (in French) but at first I got frustrated because I could not use more than one reportlet in my iGoogle page. Yes i was pushing my luck but hey, you can’t blame me for trying 😉
Anyhow, Michael was very quick to react to my comment and presto, three days later his team had put together a fix 😀
If you like Google Analytics and would like to have your KPIs right when you open your browser, this module is for you!
KPI customization appears to be in their plans so watch this space, we’ll cover it when it’s released.
Tip: if you still like to have your news feeds and other gadgets, create a new tab dedicated to your GA reportlets. By the way if anyone knows how to bookmark an iGoogle tab, please let me know 😉
Take no offense, but I like to think we Euros have more foreign language exposure in our own continent than in Northern America. As a quick reminder, Europe is a continental block that spans over 40 countries and more than 15 different languages. How is that for diversity? 😉
A moins que vous ne fassiez la promotion de votre site Web exclusivement sur le Web, vous vous êtes sans doute déjà rendu compte que le suivi de vos visiteurs provenant de sources autres qu’Internet (off-line) est un vrai casse-tête.
Aurélie me parlait l’autre jour d’une discussion sur une émission de télévision dont la vidéo est disponible sur le site de l’émission. Les internautes peuvent ensuite discuter de l’émission sur le forum du site.
Une question intéressante à se poser était: quelle est la proportion des utilisateurs du forum qui visitent le site après avoir regardé l’émission à la télévision? par rapport aux purs internautes qui ne font que consommer du contenu en ligne : vidéo de l’émission et forum ? A l’époque du Web 2.0 et des interactions qui y sont développées, la notion de capture d’évènements et l’importance de l’identification de ses visiteurs deviennent vitales.
D’où une question plus globale : comment identifer chaque type de population, chaque segment utilisateur en fonction de leur provenance et de leur activité sur un site Web?
As I was finishing up my meetings with René in Amsterdam on Friday afternoon – we are finally back in Brussels, after 2 weeks of France & The Netherlands – I read a mail coming from Mehdi on my BlackBerry, proudly announcing Avinash Kaushik had announced his Top Ten Web Analytics Blogs for July 2007 and our little pan European effort had ranked number 5. Lou Bega started singing in my head.
Mehdi’s enthusiasm was very touching as well as he joined us a couple of months ago, as young Google Analytics Jehdi apprentice. It’s refreshing to work with Mehdi as he is curious and being a former controler, has a different perspective on things. I am happy to discuss monetization of Web Analytics with Mehdi, while he gets his technical apprentiship from master Julien. Mehdi is also a natural communicator and loves to pass on knowledge. He will thus take over Google Analytics workshops from Julien, with some more support than Siegert and I had in our early beginnings 😉
While Siegert is still enjoying the Italian country side, Guillaume came back from France to upgrade our Unica installation, allowing me to play around with it some more. Fun!
Julien took a look at a Xiti account and we further discussed our interest to meet some Xiti people…
Yes, this is an open invitation: our position remains vendor independant and we are always open to discovering new, interesting, foreward thinking web analytics tools. It’s most of all about convincing my little business unit of the interest and added value of the tool in order to answer business questions, in a return on investment perspective for a web analytics project that would incorporate processes, analysis and results.
And René is of course setting up our Web Analytics Day that is set-up to take place in Brussels, on September 14th 2007, at the Federation of Belgian Enterprises.
Between that, a couple of clients and revered partners fill my days. Eric Peterson is one of them and he has things to say about Technorati rankings, upon which Avinash’s list is partially based. (more…)
A couple of weeks ago, I was looking at some BBC program about Paris and I was surfing through our blog in paralel when I stopped at the Google Trends post I wrote last year. Then I went back to the tool and I was intrigued to see the evolution of the trends of certain terms.
Après mes précédents billets sur les élections présidentielles et les partis politiques en France, où on a vu que les écarts en termes de Web Analytics étaient surtout fonction de la popularité existante des partis et de leurs budgets dédiés aux Web Analytics, je m’intéresse aujourd’hui (en fait depuis plusieurs années) à l’élection présidentielle de 2008 aux Etats-Unis.
Dans ce pays qui ne cesse de nous surprendre, la campagne présidentielle commence deux ans après l’entrée en fonction du président élu. Et il se trouve justement que pour cette édition 2007-2008, on parle de plus en plus du phénomène Ron Paul.
NOTE: Ce billet ne reflète aucunement l’opinion politique d’OX2 ou de ses employés 😉
We’ve been very busy these past weeks, sorry for the few posts. I just wanted to highlight a couple of podcasts that Aurélie has done recently:
Eric from Jenerous, did an interview of Aurélie where they discussed different topics about the future of Web Analytics. You can listen to the podcast here.
As I was discussing an e-Commerce Google Analytics project last Thursday with Julien, I saw the ZAAZ’s Web Analytics book lying on his desk. I quickly gleaned through the index as Julien was finishing up his emails to Omniture and noticed in the last chapters a mention of Interactive Agencies.
Julien promised to hand the book over as soon as he’s finished as I’m quite curious to read what the ZAAZ boys have come up in their position as an Interactive Agency and long term Web Analytics professional consultants. Jason Burby has always been a beacon of light in my web analytics journey, ever since his first presentations landed on my desktop through the help of WebTrends. So, I’ll have to be patient until Julien finishes the book and I’ll keep on reading Naom Chomsky’s Failed States, which seems to be costing me some sleep lately.
In this post, I just wanted to share my experiences over the past couple of years as a web analytics consultant, through different projects, within multiple sectors and using different tools as well as multiple actors, ranging from IT to marketing, including other Web/Interactive Agencies. Please don’t worry, clients and vendors, I won’t get specific as I do respect confidentiality. (more…)
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 😉
Apple vient finalement de lancer la semaine dernière, son navigateur web Safari sur la plateforme Windows.
Non, vous n’avez pas mal lu, il y avait bien “Safari” et “Windows” dans la même phrase.
On peut donc s’attendre à une prise de rendez-vous massive de poules chez leur dentiste 😉
Plus sérieusement, Apple fait un grand pas en avant et cette avancée aura sans doute des répercussions intéressantes sur le monde du Web. (more…)
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 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.”
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.
So you had all heard the news and many of us blogged about it right away: Omniture acquired Visual Sciences for an amount equal to half the GDP of a small African country, but I digress 😉
And now, an internationalized, English version of 
Après une petite pause au soleil bien méritée, notre 
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.
If you are a regular follower of the 
A moins que vous ne fassiez la promotion de votre site Web exclusivement sur le Web, vous vous êtes sans doute déjà rendu compte que le suivi de vos visiteurs provenant de sources autres qu’Internet (off-line) est un vrai casse-tête.
As I was finishing up my meetings with René in Amsterdam on Friday afternoon – we are finally back in Brussels, after 2 weeks of France & The Netherlands – I read a mail coming from Mehdi on my BlackBerry, proudly announcing Avinash Kaushik had announced his 
Après mes précédents billets sur les 
Apple vient finalement de lancer la semaine dernière, son navigateur web Safari sur la plateforme Windows.
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 
OX2 Web Analytics Blog 