Thank you the financial crisis!

Everybody agrees to say this is the biggest financial crisis the world has ever known. Even worse than the big one of 1929. And they are probably right.
I won’t do a long analysis of it here as lots of bright economists do that much better than me but honestly, what better times than a financial crisis for a web analyst?

Of course, crisis means recession, investments will be freezed or at least will slow down, non-necessary activities will see their budget aborted, probably very few companies (except the pure internet players) will spend money to improve their internet solutions and web analysts will be amongst the firsts to suffer from the situation.

But don’t you think this crisis can be a good opportunity to improve the internet presence of any company willing to have the best return on their online investments?
Times are difficult?
Budgets are smaller?

Let’s optimize the investments done in online marketing and communication!

It’s time to optimize (or put in place) the necessary mechanisms to measure the effectiveness of our web sites in order to better target our audience, to better understand our visitors and to refine our web sites to ultimately better serve (and satisfy) our customers.

The next months will be difficult for all of us, it is time to work on tools and process which will give us the necessary competitiveness and will help us to minimize the effects of the crisis.

Yes, definitely, times are not so bad for web analysts.

Web Analytics Wednesday in Zürich

After the success of the first Web Analytics Wednesday in Geneva, Zürich will host the second WAW of Switzerland the 25th of June.

SOGETI, sponsor of this second event, will welcome Web Analytics specialists and pratictionners in the St-Gotthard Hotel - Bahnhofstrasse 87 - 8021 Zürich.

Thanks to the feedback of the Geneva session, the Zürich session will leave more time to the networking and exchange between people, the agenda is:

1. Welcome words.
2. Introduction WAA / WAW to participants.
3. Networking : getting to know each other.
4. Discuss WAA activities in German Speaking area of Switzerland and in other parts of Switzerland.
5. What’s next

You are in Zürich on 25th of June?
You want to talk and share about web analytics with people working in the same field?

Register on WebAnalytics Demystified website and join us in St-Gotthard Hotel.

See you there.

183…

… is the number of days I had to wait for my account to register to beta version of Microsoft adCenter Analytics…

Few hours later, I received a new email, indeed the same one with a note apologizing on behalf of the team for the unavailability of the registration process. Things started really badly…
Add to this the very mixed opinions of the lucky people having accessed to the tool before me, I’m not in any hurry to look at this new tool.

Well, of course I will look at it, and right now, at least to make my own opinion after so much wait.

One valuable week in Chicago with WebTrends

In April I was one week in Chicago attending the WebTrends courses leading up to the new certification; WebTrends Certified Analytics Program.

I must say that it was a valuable week, and I recommend this to all WebTrends users out there. I’ve done WebTrends courses before, sp a lot of the things covered were known, but still it was a great benefit.

After coming back home, and been working a few weeks, I finds myself spending less time doing more. Everything just seems easier.

I find that the solution works faster, and I don’t feel the hassle I’ve felt plenty of times before. At the same time it feels like all the limitations are gone. WebTrends is still the same, but perhaps it’s me. It feels like I’m a new man.

Somehow I now seem to find the right solution right away. I feel I know webanalytics pretty well and have for quite a few years. Before it was often that the numbers decided what we could analysze and dig into. Now the tables are turned. I can focus on what to analyze, I can spend time on what to conceptualize, knowing that I will find the numbers neccecary. The fuss about finding the numbers is gone. It’s now right down to business.

I can really recommend the certification program, and enclose links to the next to opportunitues for you, in June in both London, UK and Portland, USA.

First Web Analytics Wednesday in Switzerland…

…was held last Wednesday.
30 participants came for an afternoon talking about Web Analytics.

This half-day sponsored by Sogeti started with a short introduction to the Web Analytics Wednesday concept and the Web Analytics Association followed by an excerpt of the Outlook 2008 survey report conducted by the WAA end of last year. This gave to the audience a good overview and a better understanding of the context of Web Analytics all over the world and the possibility to better position themsleve in this new field.

Then Julien Coquet, the new Country Manager France for the Web Analytics Association, talked about the KPIs in a presentation that have been much appreciated by the audience.
We had then a small presentation about the different profiles you can face to when you work on an Web Analytics project and the necessity to introduce and set up processes. The afternoon ended with a buffet where participants were able to continue discussion around a glass of wine.

Unfortunately, we were not able to have a testimony of implementation and use of web analytics on a real case (Nestlé) as planned. And according to the feedback we had, this was missing to the majority who would have like to talk about a real case study.

I voluntarily wanted this first edition a little bit more formal in order to emphasize the message about necessity to build a community around Web Analytics in Switzerland, however 46% of participants would like more interactivity and 38% suggest discussion and sharing about real case studies for the next sessions.

Finaly,

So, let’s meet on the next Web Analytics Wednesday in Switzerland.

Yahoo! acquires Indextools

Yesterday, April 9 2008, Yahoo! announced agreement to acquire IndexTools’ Analytics Business.
Even if Yahoo! precised that their press release […]contains forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties concerning the proposed transaction (sic) and that the potential risks and uncertainties include, among others, the possibility that the transaction will not close or that the closing may be delayed (sic), Denis R. Mortensen, COO of Indextools, agreed to stay onboard as the Director of Data Insights at Yahoo!

Yahoo! expects that the IndexTools’ technology platform will provide [their] customers the opportunity to more quickly uncover and act on these insights, enhancing Yahoo!’s status as a partner of choice in online marketing and the must buy for the world’s advertisers.

Yahoo! Indextools to compete Google Analytics and Microsoft AdCenter Analytics?
Read E. Peterson vision about it.

Task Completion: A simple but powerful metric

Much of the discourse surrounding voice of the customer analytics centers around online customer satisfaction. I want to talk a little bit another another tremendously powerful metric that sometimes gets overlooked–task completion. While task completion will never displace its big brother, satisfaction, it can be just as powerful a metric for websites where success is cut and dry, and here I’m make specific reference to transactional sites and lead generation sites.

These kinds of sites are not destinations. They are not like Facebook, MySpace, recently acquired Bebo, or any other of the burgeoning Web 2.0 communities. Visitors are not onsite for the heady sense of self-casting that Web 2.0 purveys; rather, they have come with the intent of doing something. They have taken time out of their busy days for very specific reasons, and they are undertaking very precise tasks. The most critical challenge as a site owner in such a situation is shepherding people to the completion of these tasks. If websites are to be held accountable as mature interactive channels, then this maxim must ring true.

If visitors’ tasks are not complete, it is of little value if they are left feeling engaged or if the site managed to monopolize a sizable chunk of their time. For these sites to operate at optimal efficiency, buyers must be buying, support seekers must be obtaining support, content creators must be creating, and learners must be learning.

This is not just a deep rooted belief of mine; it is also a contention based on a solid bedrock of evidence. Consider the following results, taken from iPerceptions’ automotive industry database and covering the period from June 2007 to January 2008, inclusive. Task completion was a tremendously strong ROI predictor among visitors with a purchase horizon of 3 months or less—even stronger than overall site satisfaction. Close to 70% of respondents who completed their onsite tasks also expressed an increased likelihood to purchase a vehicle further to their website visit. This share fell to 63% among visitors who reported that their overall site satisfaction was “Good” or better. These findings stem from a dataset of more than 15,000 respondents; therefore, the sampling error is negligible.

Task completion is a sensible, simple, and powerful metric. Most importantly, it ties back to hard actions taken by visitors. While respondents can be more forgiving when reporting their satisfaction with a website or their loyalty patterns, often opting to cling to a safe, noncommittal response, when they are asked whether they completed their tasks, it’s a cut and dry equation—they either did or they didn’t.

Don’t push everything on the first day

Don’t plan for everything and execute thinking the job is done… 

I find that too many campaigns focus on the first three days of the campaign. My experience is that your banners/ads/landings pages etc. are never perfect in the beginning of a campaign. You always need to optimize while the campaign is running.

If you put all the big bucks in your first three days, then you don’t really have time to adjust. In which case you’ll loose out on a lot of the possible effects you could have gotten just by planning your campaign a little better.

Sometimes you have to explode on day one, especially if you have a cross-channel campaign. In this case it’s very important that you have a small pilot or test campaign the week before, so that you can make your adjustments before the hard launch.

The same principle applies to the media and placements and creatives you should choose. Try out small amounts on a large scale of different placements, and then choose the ones that work for you. Don’t think you can plan for everything. Don’t think you can execute perfectly on the first try. Try, try, evaluate, learn, and try again…

First Web Analytics Wednesday in Switzerland

The first Web Analytics Wednesday in Switzerland will be held in Geneva on 23rd of April.
This half-day will be the opportunity to meet people interested in Web Analytics in Geneva area. We plan to have one hour presentation including testimonies from practitioners and then two hours discussion and networking.

Join us for this first edition of WAW in Switzerland.

Registration form here

A New Professional Network dedicated to Analytical Field

An interesting initiative is born last week in the world of analytical professionals. Vincent Grandville launched www.AnalyticBridge.com, the first network for analytical professionals.

Launched mi-February, it allows you to create your own group, publish your most spectacular statistical charts, contact other professionals, invite people, announce your seminar, conference or consultancy, receive technical help on various topics including computational finance, web analytics, quality control, statistical software.

The amazing thing is the way it has grown from 20 to about 400 people in just one week…