10 Tips for Web Analytics Wednesday Awesomeness

Posted on May 1, 2012October 25, 2019 by Eric Peterson

I’ve become enamored with the “10 tips” format for organizing information (thank you, ACCELERATE), and I’ve had a couple of recent situations where people I know have asked for my advice on getting rolling with or successfully sustaining Web Analytics Wednesdays. A couple of years ago, someone actually tried to get a group of WAW organizers around the world together to come up with a handy guide for WAW organizers, but, due to scheduling issues, that never came together. After a successful Columbus WAW last week (shown below), it seemed worthwhile to write up what I’ve learned about planning and running WAWs over the last four years.

Some of these tips overlap with the FAQ posted on the WAW site, and I’ve also created a one-page Excel checklist that covers the various details that go into our events to supplement this post.

And now, onto the tips!

Tip No. 1: Start Small

In Columbus, we now have a WAW almost every month, and we have between 40 and 60 attendees at each on . It took us several years to get to that level of consistent turnout, and that, in my mind, was a good thing. The core group that met over the first year or so got to know each other really well, as there were only 8-15 us at each event, and we could actually have group discussions in which everyone participated. Those early participants are still regularly attendees. People came consistently because they enjoyed the people, and they were patient with logistical hiccups and not-so-great venues. They provided feedback and made suggestions that helped us refine the what, the how, and the where of future events.

The other benefit of starting small is that you don’t have to worry about paying for the event – the Web Analytics Wednesday Global Sponsors are insanely easy to tap into to cover the cost (more on that in Tip No. 9).

Tip No. 2: Location, Location, Location

Location matters. In Columbus, this was something that took us over a year to really nail down, and I wasn’t much help, as I had only recently moved to the area. Some things to look for in a venue:

Centrally located – most cities have some degree of sprawl, so there is no location that is perfect for everyone; but, what we’ve found is that, the closer we can get the venue to the main business district, the better
Separate meeting room – lots of restaurants have rooms that can be reserved for private parties; sometimes, they require a separate fee, but sometimes they just require a minimum total spend. All things are negotiable – you’re bringing business to them on a Wednesday night, so they are generally flexible.
Low-to-moderate noise level – if the venue has a separate room, this is less of an issue; if it doesn’t, the noise level is key. WAWs are, first and foremost, about people meeting and talking to other people, and no one wants to be hoarse on Thursday morning. Live music and happenin’ bar scenes are cool…but they don’t make for great WAWs
Presentation-friendly – at a minimum, having a room that has a layout that is conducive to a projector and screen is important if there will be any presenting (see Tip No. 7); some venues have screens, and some actually have projectors. But, if the room layout isn’t such that it will support a projector and screen, then make sure you’ve thought through how visual information will be shared in the absence (tip: large companies typically have projectors that employees can check out for meetings – we regularly tap into attendees who work at such companies to actually provide the projectors). Handouts work, too.

Nailing down a single good location is hard enough, but we actually now have 2-3 good locations. This allows us to mix things up so that the event doesn’t start to seem like it has fallen into a rut. And, it gives us options – if one venue is booked for the preferred WAW date, another one is likely to be open.

Tip No. 3: Be Consistent

The cadence of WAWs seems to matter. We aim for an event once per month and know that, occasionally, we won’t manage to have one. Having the events on a regular schedule adds credibility to the event overall (which helps with sponsors and attendees alike), and it really helps convert “networking acquaintances” into “professional friends.”

There is definitely a commitment required in order to follow this tip. From the get-go in Columbus, we had multiple co-organizers, and that group of organizers has grown. We split up the effort — one secured a venue each month, one person handled the emails to past attendees, another person handled finding new ways to promote the event — and have built a pretty solid and repeatable process.

It’s difficult to build momentum without a consistent and recurring schedule, so getting organized and making it a group effort is key (see Tip No. 10).

Tip No. 4: Build a WAW Database

From our first event onward, I started entering the name and email address of each person who registered for a Columbus WAW into a Google Spreadsheet (I now use ExactTarget for this). This requires a little bit of sleuthing, as the WAW registration form only collects an email address. But, 9 times out of 10, it’s pretty easy to figure out the person’s name (the internet being scary that way and all…) and company. This is a bit tedious, but it’s worth it, as it gives us an ever-growing “house list” to whom we can promote upcoming events.

We now have a sign-in sheet at every event to collect the name and email address of each attendee. To reduce the level of data entry and handwriting-deciphering required, I pre-print a list of all registrants for the sign-in sheet and just ask people to check a box next to their name to indicate they’ve arrived. That sheet has blank rows for people who registered late or didn’t register to write in their information.

Tip No. 5: Invite and Remind

Obviously, it’s not enough to just build and maintain a house list if it doesn’t get used. For every WAW, each person on that list gets sent at least two emails (but no more than three):

Notification / invitation – a couple of weeks out, we send an email to the entire list letting them know of the upcoming event
Second invitation – for anyone who has not registered a week out, we send a second invitation; the content is very similar to the first one, but we generally mix up the subject line and the body copy a bit
Reminder – for anyone who has registered, we send a reminder email 2-3 days before the event

We try to consistently hit some key information with each email:

The date and location for the event
Information as to the topic that will be presented (if we have a presentation)
A reminder that the event is free
A link to the event registration page on the WAW site

We’ve even done some A/B testing on the subject lines, but, with a list that is only several hundred people, that’s more because it’s a good way to experiment with the process for A/B testing in ExactTarget than because we’ve been able to learn anything of note about effective subject lines for WAW emails.

And, while we haven’t always been 100% CAN-SPAM compliant, we’ve always been clear in all communications as to how the recipient could opt out of future emails, and we honor any opt out requests we receive.

Tip No. 6: Multi-Channel Promotion

In addition to email, we consistently push out notifications through as many channels as possible:

Through the Facebook group we created for our WAW
Through the LinkedIn group we created for our WAW
Through Twitter (using the #measure hashtag)
Through other local channels (in our case, there is a very active tech-oriented community on meetup.com)

We don’t actively maintain any of these channels for any purpose other than notifications of upcoming events. That may not be a social media best practice, but it works, in that participants can opt in to non-email communication through whatever channel they prefer.

One thing we did learn was that we shouldn’t just sit down on one night and send out the email and simultaneously update every social media channel. This just meant that users who were connected through multiple means got spammed with the same information all at one point in time, which reduced its effectiveness (and was a little annoying). We now spread out the updates over the course of several days.

Tip No. 7: Limited Formal Presentations / Plenty of Time for Networking

We tell our presenters to aim for 15-20 minutes and to avoid presentations that are simply sales pitches for their companies. With brief presentations on relevant topics (sometimes the sponsor presents, sometimes it’s simply one of the organizers or an attendee who has volunteered a topic), we tend to spend another 15-30 minutes in Q&A and discussion. The feedback we’ve consistently gotten is that attendees enjoy both the networking and having some formally presented content. So, we strive to keep a balance between the two. Two keys to that:

Very clear (polite, but firm) communication to the presenters ahead of time as to expectations regarding presentation length
Having one of the organizers prepared to manage the clock — be it signaling the presenter to wrap up or announcing “let’s do one more question” if things run long and the crowd starts to squirm (some day, I’ll live down cutting off Chris Grant after she traveled all the way down from Michigan for our WAW…)

The schedule we’ve followed for the past few years is:

6:30 – 7:00 — sign-in and networking
7:00 – 7:10-ish — find seats, welcome and announcements
7:10 – 7:45-ish — presentation and Q&A
7:45-ish – 8:30/9:00 — more networking

I’ve got the word “networking” in the title of this tip and a couple of times in the listed schedule above, but, honestly, “hanging out” is probably a better description. Like-minded people with food and beer… it’s fun!

Tip No. 8: Encourage Tweeting

We encourage tweeting at our WAWs for all of the same reasons tweeting is encouraged at conferences:

It publicizes the event and content out to the followers of the attendees
It fosters networking as people engage with each other during the presentation
It provides a nice way to have crowdsourced “notes” from the presentation

To promote tweeting, we have started printing out little cards that we put at all of the tables that include:

The Twitter usernames of the presenter(s)
The hashtag for the event (we use #cbuswaw)
The logos of our sponsors (nothing should get printed or emailed that doesn’t include a thank you to the sponsors)

Even if there are only a small number of attendees, and even if there is no formal presentation, tweets can help spread the word.

Tip No. 9: Free Drinks (and Food, if Possible)

We’re reaching the end of this list, but that doesn’t mean these tips are any less important! Free drinks are a must! While no one attends a WAW simply because they are burdened with an empty bank account and a drinking problem, by offering booze, the overall vibe and purpose gets communicated as a “fun event” more than a “professional obligation.”

Providing free drinks can get expensive…but it’s worth the effort to make sure it happens. Sub-tips on that front:

If you’re just getting started, and it’s a small event, tap into the Web Analytics Wednesday Global Sponsors. That’s what their sponsorship is there for!
Use drink tickets to manage the total outlay. I have yet to host an event at a bar or restaurant that doesn’t have drink tickets on hand for our use, and, by handing out 1-2 tickets (we usually do 2), you can ensure that your sponsors aren’t inadvertently funding a fraternity party
Seek out sponsors — the smaller the event, the smaller the ask; the larger the event, the more worthwhile it is for the sponsor. Use your and other attendees connections to the analytics vendors and services they use. Many of them have marketing funds available, and it’s a great way for them to make connections with prospective customers in their territory.

We almost always provide food at our events as well. To manage costs on that front, we typically go with a “heavy appetizer buffet” rather than a full-on meal. We typically order food to cover 15-20% fewer people than we actually expect to attend. Otherwise, we wind up with crazy amounts of leftovers

Tip No. 10: Ask for Help

As I put together the checklist to accompany this post, and as I wrote the post itself, I realized how many moving parts there are in our process. No single event will ever be perfect, and it doesn’t have to be. But, the more details that get consistently covered, the more likely the WAWs are to flourish and grow. The best way to cover those details is through organization and teamwork: ask for volunteers to help with future events at each of your events; pay attention to who seems to be most engaged and has useful ideas and suggestions for future events. Recruit!

What’s Missing?

The downloadable checklist is intended as a companion to these tips, and it’s organized based on the different aspects of managing a WAW. I hope you find it useful.

What else have you seen — either when organizing or attending a WAW — that works particularly well? I’d love to get some comments that give us some ideas for continuing to improve our events!

Analytics Strategy

Monish Datta Gives #cbuswaw w/ Eric Peterson & ForeSee Thumbs-Up

Posted on October 9, 2011October 25, 2019 by Eric Peterson

We blew past our previous attendance record at the latest Columbus Web Analytics Wednesday, and the speaker did not disappoint! We were fortunate to have Eric Peterson in town and extremely lucky to have Foresee as our sponsor — covering the food and drink for a larger-than-initially-predicted turnout, as well as providing a copy of Larry Freed’s new book to each person who asked a question. All in all, the event got a figurative thumbs-up from many of the attendees, and I caught a literal thumbs up from Monish Datta as well:

Eric played to a packed house, which he handled with ease:

The evening’s format was simply a “Q&A with Eric Peterson.” Knowing our audience, I was confident that the questions would be good ones, and they were!

I’ve used Twitter as a crowdsourced note-taking tool in the past at events like 2011 eMetrics San Francisco, and it has worked out well. So, for this event, I made sure that our standard event hashtag — #cbuswaw — was included on notecards scattered around the room (along with the username for our speaker — @erictpeterson — and our sponsor — @foresee). I set up a TweetReach tracker ahead of the event based on the hashtag and then just sat back and let the “note taking” begin!

In the end, we had 179 tweets from 49 different people:

For a small networking event in central Ohio, that seemed like plenty of taking of notes! Several attendees were following the stream of tweets and retweeting as various thoughts caught their eyes (counting myself amongst that group), so it’s a reasonable leap, I think, that looking at the “most retweeted” tweets is a quick-and-dirty way to get a read on what content was most resonant with the in-person audience.

The most retweeted tweets:

Social media was definitely one hot topic, for which Eric had some thoughts about overall maturity and challenges, but he also referred attendees to his partner, John Lovett’s, book on the subject.

There was also a discussion about “standards” for web analytics. Eric had some new and interesting thoughts on that front…but I found out later that he’d been tossing those around in his head for a while and has a draft blog post written on that subject. So, keep an eye on his blog to see if that gets fleshed out.

I honestly don’t remember if it was the social media question or the standards question that led to a discussion of “measuring engagement,” but John Hondroulis managed to dig up Eric’s post from 2007 on the subject and get that shared out to the crowd.

And, the inevitable privacy topic came up, which garnered a few tweets about the WAA’s Code of Ethics.

All in all, it was a fantastic event!

Analytics Strategy

Web Analytics Tools Comparison — Columbus WAW Recap Part 2

Posted on March 1, 2011October 25, 2019 by Eric Peterson

[Update: After getting some feedback from a Coremetrics expert and kicking around the content with a few other people, I rounded out the presentation a bit.]

In my last post, I recapped and posted the content from Bryan Cristina’s 10-minute presentation and discussion of campaign measurement planning at February’s Columbus Web Analytics Wednesday. For my part of the event, I tackled a comparison of the major web analytics platforms: Google Analytics, Adobe/Omniture Sitecatalyst, Webtrends, and, to a certain extent, Coremetrics. I only had five minutes to present, so I focussed in on just the base tools — not the various “warehouse” add-ons, not the A/B and MVT testing tools, etc.

Which Tool Is Best?

This question gets asked all the time. And, anyone who has been in the industry for more than six nanoseconds knows the answer: “It depends.” That’s not a very satisfying answer, but it’s true. Unfortunately, it’s also an easy answer — someone who knows Google Analytics inside and out, has never seen the letters “DCS,” referenced the funkily-spelled “eluminate” tag, or bristled at Microsoft usurping the word “Vista” for use with a crappy OS, can still confidently answer the, “Which tool is best?” question with, “It depends.”

And You’re Different?

The challenge is that very, very few people are truly fluent in more than a couple of web analytics tools. I’ve heard that a sign of fluency in a language is that you actually think in the language. Most of us in web analytics, I suspect, are not able to immediately slip into translated thought when it comes to a tool. So, here’s my self-evaluation of my web analytics tool fluency (with regards to the base tools offered — excluding add-ons for this assessment; since the add-ons bring a lot of power, that’s an important limitation to note):

Basic page tag data capture mechanics — 95th percentile — this is actually something pretty important to have a good handle on when it comes to understanding one of the key differences between Sitecatalyst and other tools
Google Analytics — 95th percentile — I’m not Brian Clifton or John Henson, but I’ve crafted some pretty slick implementations in some pretty tricky situations
Adobe-iture Sitecatalyst — 80th percentile — I’m more recent to the Sitecatalyst world, but I’ve now gotten some implementations under my belt that leverage props, evars, correlations, subrelations, classifications, and even a crafty usage of the products variable
Webtrends — 80th percentile — I cut my teeth on Webtrends and would have put myself in the 95th percentile five years ago, but my use of the tool has been limited of late; I’m actually surprised at how little some of the fundamentals change, but maybe I should
Coremetrics — 25th percentile — I can navigate the interface, I’ve dived into the mechanics of the different tags, and I’ve done some basic implementation work; it’s just the nature of the client work I’ve done — my agency has Coremetrics expertise, and I’m hoping to rely on that to refine the presentation over time

So, there’s my full disclosure. I consider myself to be pretty impartial when it comes to tools (I don’t have much patience for people who claim impartiality and then exhibit a clear bias towards “their” tool — the one tool they know really well), but, who knows? It’s a fine line between “lack of bias” and “waffler.”

Any More Caveats Before You Get to the Content?

My goal with this exercise was to sink my teeth in a bit and see what I could clearly capture and explain as the differences. Ideally, this would also get to the, “So what?” question. What I’ve found, though, is that answering that question gets circular in a hurry: “If <something one tool shines as> is important to you, then you really should go with <that tool>.” Two examples:

If enabling users to quickly segment traffic and view any number of reports by those segments is important, then you should consider Google Analytics (…or buying the “warehouse” add-on and plenty of seats for whatever other tool you go with)
If being able to view clickpaths through content aggregated different ways is important, then you should consider Sitecatalyst

These are more of a “features”-oriented assessment, and they rely on a level of expertise with web analytics in order to assess their importance in a given situation. That makes it tough.

Any tool is only as good as its implementation and the analysts using it (see Avinash’s 10/90 rule!). Some tools are much trickier to implement and maintain than others — that trickiness brings a lot of analytics flexibility, so the implementation challenges have an upside. In the end, I’ll take any tool properly implemented and maintained over a tool I get to choose that is going to be poorly implemented.

Finally! The Comparison

I expect to continue to revisit this subject, but the presentation below is the first cut. You might want to click through to view it on SlideShare and click the “Speaker Notes” tab under the main slide area — I added those in after I presented to try to catch the highlights of what I spoke to on each slide.

http://static.slidesharecdn.com/swf/ssplayer2.swf?doc=webanalyticstoolscomparison-110227152355-phpapp01&stripped_title=web-analytics-tools-comparison&userName=tgwilson

Do you see anything I missed or with which you violently disagree? Let me know!

http://b.scorecardresearch.com/beacon.js?c1=7&c2=7400849&c3=1&c4=&c5=&c6= http://b.scorecardresearch.com/beacon.js?c1=7&c2=7400849&c3=1&c4=&c5=&c6=

http://b.scorecardresearch.com/beacon.js?c1=7&c2=7400849&c3=1&c4=&c5=&c6=http://b.scorecardresearch.com/beacon.js?c1=7&c2=7400849&c3=1&c4=&c5=&c6=http://b.scorecardresearch.com/beacon.js?c1=7&c2=7400849&c3=1&c4=&c5=&c6= http://b.scorecardresearch.com/beacon.js?c1=7&c2=7400849&c3=1&c4=&c5=&c6=

http://b.scorecardresearch.com/beacon.js?c1=7&c2=7400849&c3=1&c4=&c5=&c6=
http://b.scorecardresearch.com/beacon.js?c1=7&c2=7400849&c3=1&c4=&c5=&c6=

http://b.scorecardresearch.com/beacon.js?c1=7&c2=7400849&c3=1&c4=&c5=&c6=
http://b.scorecardresearch.com/beacon.js?c1=7&c2=7400849&c3=1&c4=&c5=&c6=http://b.scorecardresearch.com/beacon.js?c1=7&c2=7400849&c3=1&c4=&c5=&c6=http://b.scorecardresearch.com/beacon.js?c1=7&c2=7400849&c3=1&c4=&c5=&c6=

http://b.scorecardresearch.com/beacon.js?c1=7&c2=7400849&c3=1&c4=&c5=&c6=

Reporting

Campaign Measurement Planning — Columbus WAW Recap Part 1

Posted on February 28, 2011October 25, 2019 by Eric Peterson

We tried a new format at last week’s Columbus Web Analytics Wednesday, in that we had three completely unrelated presentations, and we kept the entire presentation period to right at a half hour. Mathematically, that gave us 10 minutes per presentation, and we split the time between formal presenting and Q&A. The event was sponsored by Resource Interactive (population 320-ish and growin’; SA…LUTE! </heehaw>), and it was our first “presentation included” WAW since last November. Apparently, we had some pent-up WAW demand, as we had right around 45 attendees.

The three presentations of the evening were:

Social Search by Dave Culbertson of Lightbulb Interactive
Campaign measurement planning by Bryan Cristina of Nationwide Insurance
Web analytics platforms comparison by yours truly of Resource Interactive

Dave’s presentation was the most informal and focussed on the various developments across Facebook/Bing and Google when it comes to incorporating social graph and social profile data into search results. The Google video he showed was pretty interesting, and he illustrated how rapidly the space is evolving. But, overall, I took lousy notes, so I don’t know that I’ll manage to get a full blog post up on the subject.

As for Bryan’s presentation, I had the benefit of previewing the material and, as such, getting to have a mini-Q&A with Bryan via e-mail.

Campaign Measurement Planning

Bryan and I are both pretty passionate about measurement planning. His presentation really nails some key points about the topic and has a fantastic list on slide 8 as to elements to consider including in a measurement plan:

http://static.slidesharecdn.com/swf/ssplayer2.swf?doc=campaignmeasurementplanspresentation-110227154253-phpapp01&stripped_title=campaign-measurement-plans-presentation&userName=tgwilson

In addition, Bryan provided a (click to download) measurement plan example Word document (it’s an auto insurance company example, so it’s obviously grounded in reality, but he worked it over pretty thoroughly on several fronts in preparation for the presentation, so it is an entirely fictional example).

I asked Bryan a couple of questions offline about his approach prior to the event:

Q: Under “Targets and Benchmarks,” you note, “Don’t be afraid to put ‘TBD’ or ‘No Data’ for some benchmarks.” If that is the case, do you support not setting a target, or should you still try to set a target (even noting that it is a bit of a swag) in the absence of a benchmark?

Bryan’s response: I try to set a target no matter what because it gets people at least thinking about it and TRYING to set up some kind of expectation. It makes sure that people are at least estimating. Maybe they don’t know the CPC for the search terms yet, aren’t sure on the demand, and aren’t sure on the completion rates, but it’s at least a start. We were completely off for one of our last campaigns because we had no idea on all those factors. It still gave the agency something to report on for their % of goal and it drove an informed discussion mid-campaign.

[I, of course, loved this answer…because I totally agreed with it]

Q: You’re at a company that uses agencies for much of the campaign execution, and, clearly, you have put in a process whereby you develop this sort of plan partly as a tool to drive clarity and alignment with the agencies and their work. As an agency analyst, we are increasingly including “measurement planning” as a non-optional part of the scope of our engagements. In those cases, we (the agency) actually do the discovery and documentation of the measurement plan (which clients provide input to, review, and approve). I actually would love to have clients coming to us with this level of forethought, but, in the absence of that, what are your thoughts on having the accountability for the creation of a measurement plan reside with an agency?

Bryan’s response: I think this varies on the relationship between the agency and company. For us, we’re very capable, we all know how to do the campaign execution, but we just don’t have the time or bodies to do it. I’m sure there are many companies that have no clue how to do it, so the agency does both the execution and the strategy, or the execution, strategy, tracking, plus reporting, or whatever else. It really depends on the analytics maturity of the client as to whether it makes more sense for the agency or the client to own the creation of the plan. If it’s the agency, you’d have to be absolutely be sure to talk to the client in depth about all of it and make sure they’re on board with all the points. In the end, the outcome should be the same, the only difference really being the author of the document would be the agency instead of the business, and I’m sure some of the reporting responsibilities would change based on that.

Bryan joked during his presentation about how “exciting” the topic of measurement planning is. Obviously, it can seem like a pretty dry topic, but, in both of our experiences, measurement planning can drive some tough and interesting discussions. More importantly, it’s a foundational element of marketing — without it, you wind up looking back after the fact and wondering if what you executed was successful, whether you captured the right data, and whether you learned anything that can be meaningfully applied to the next initiative.

Hey…I also cleaned up my “sharing” options on my blog this weekend. Go ahead. Give it a try! See how easy it is to Like or Tweet (or…er…whether I really got those implemented and functioning correctly). Who knows, maybe Facebook Insights will start giving me some interesting web site data!

Analytics Strategy, Reporting, Social Media

Monish Datta Learns All about Facebook Measurement

Posted on June 3, 2010October 25, 2019 by Eric Peterson

Columbus Web Analytics Wednesday was last week — sponsored by Omniture, an Adobe company, and the topic wound up being “Facebook Measurement” (deck at the end of this post).

For some reason, Monish Datta cropped up — prominently — in half of the pictures I took while floating around the room. In my never-ending quest to dominate SEO for searches for Monish, this was well-timed, as I’m falling in the rankings on that front. You’d think I’d be able to get some sort of cross-link from http://www.monishdatta.com/, but maybe that’s not to be.

We had another great turnout at the event, AND we had a first for a Columbus WAW: a door prize. Omniture provided a Flip video camera and a copy of Adobe Premier Elements 8 to one lucky winner. WAW co-organizer Dave Culbertson presented the prize to the lucky winner, Matt King of Quest Software:

Due to an unavoidable last minute schedule change, I wound up pinch-hitting as the speaker and talked about Facebook measurement. It’s been something I’ve spent a good chunk of time exploring and thinking about over the past six months, and it was a topic I was slated to speak on the following night in Toronto at an Omniture user group, so it wound up being a nice dry run in front of a live, but friendly crowd.

I made some subsequent updates to the deck (improvements!), but below is substantially the material I presented:

Facebook Measurementhttp://static.slidesharecdn.com/swf/ssplayer2.swf?doc=facebookmeasurementjun-2010-100602140953-phpapp01&stripped_title=facebook-measurement-jun2010

View more presentations from Resource Interactive.

In June, Columbus Web Analytics Wednesday is actually going to happen in Cincinnati — we’re planning a road trip down and back for the event. We’re hoping for a good showing!

Analytics Strategy

Columbus WAW Recap: Don't "Antisappoint" Visitors

Posted on March 29, 2010October 25, 2019 by Eric Peterson

We had a fantastic Web Analytics Wednesday last week in Columbus, sponsored by (Adobe) Omniture, with just under 50 attendees! Darren “DJ” Johnson was the presenter, and he spoke about web site optimization (kicking off with a riff of how “optimization” is an over-used word!). I, unfortunately, forgot my “good” camera, which means my photojournalism duties were poorly, poorly performed (DJ is neither 8′ tall, nor was he ignoring his entire audience):

One of the anecdotes that stuck with me was when DJ explained a personal experience he had clicking through on a banner ad (“I NEVER click on banner ads!” he exclaimed) and then having the landing page experience totally under-deliver on the promise of the ad. He used the term “antisappointment” (or “anticappointment?”) to describe the experience. It’s a handy word that works better orally than written down, but I’ll be shocked with myself if I don’t start using it!

I’ve been spending more and more time thinking about and working on optimization strategies of late, and DJ’s presentation really brought it all together. This post isn’t going to be a lengthy explanation of optimization and testing…because I’m really not qualified to expound on the subject (yet). But, I will drop down a few takeaways from DJ’s presentation that hit home the most with me:

Testing (and targeting) doesn’t typically deliver dramatic step function improvements, so don’t expect it to — it delivers incremental improvements over time that can add up to significant gains
(Because of the above) Testing isn’t a project; it’s a process — it’s not enough to plan out a test, run it, and evaluate the results; rather, it’s important to develop the organizational capabilities to always be testing
“Testing” without “targeting” is going to deliver limited results — while initial tests may be on “all visitors to the site,” it’s important to start segmenting traffic and testing different content at the segment level as quickly as possible

Good stuff.

In other news, I’ve got a few additional bullet points:

Our next Web Analytics Wednesday is tentatively slated to be a happy hour only (unsponsored or with a limited sponsor) on a Tuesday. If you don’t already get e-mail reminders and you’d like to, just drop me a note and I’ll add you to our list (tim at this domain)
The Ohio Interactive Awards are fast approaching! This event, started up by Teambuilder Search, huber+co. interactive, and 247Interactive, is shaping up to be a great event on April 29th at the Arena Grand Movie Theater (Resource Interactive is sponsoring the event happy hour)
The TechLife Columbus meetup.com group continues to grow and thrive, with over 1,500 members now — it’s free, and it’s a great way to find meetups and people who are involved in high tech and digital in central Ohio

It’s been a lot of fun to watch social media get put to use in central Ohio and make it so easy to find interesting people with shared interests. I’ve certainly gotten to know some great people over the past couple of years with a relatively low investment of my time and energy, and I’m a better person for it!

Analytics Strategy

Columbus Web Analytics Wednesday — Feedback Analysis

Posted on February 23, 2010October 25, 2019 by Eric Peterson

It’s been a crazy month work-wise. As a result, I’ve been chalking up thoughts in my head that I’d love to get written down. One of those thoughts is actually around time management and prioritization, which I’ve been pondering in the context of, among other things, my blogging…but that’s not the subject of this post!

Following our last Web Analytics Wednesday (and somewhat in preparation for our next one), I put out a survey to my list of 150+ past registrants. I used Google Documents for the survey, which is the second or third time I’ve used Google as a survey tool over using the free version of Survey Monkey or some other service. I think I’m hooked. While you don’t have a whole lot of control over how the data gets stored in the underlying Google spreadsheet, the user experience is pretty clean, which I like. And the data can be exported straight from the Google spreadsheet and manipulated in Excel (I know I could theoretically evaluate it within the Google spreadsheet, but I’ve never managed to spend enough time with Google Docs to really have the agility I’d like there).

Who Answered?

I received 21 responses to the survey, which is a 13% response rate. Not bad! The main “profile” question I asked was how many Columbus WAWs the respondent had attended. The results showed a pretty even mix from “little to none” to “some or a lot:”

That’s good, as I feel like the results are pretty representative of the population we’re trying to serve. I didn’t go deep in the survey as to company, industry, role, etc. — we’ve got a pretty good feel for that, and I knew I wasn’t going to go nuts with trying to segment the results as part of the analysis.

What Attendees Are Looking to Get Out of WAWs

So, what are attendees looking to get out of Columbus WAWs? This question had 3 options for each category: “Not really,” “Sort of,” and “Very Much So” (my friends at Foresee Results would probably tell me that a 10-point scale without intermediate labels would have been a much cleaner method…but I’ve never claimed to be an expert in this sort of thing). The chart below shows the “Very Much So” and the “Sort of” responses (I segmented by the number of times people had attended and did not glean anything of note there):

Networking came out of the top of the list, although it was a virtual tie with increasing web analytics knowledge. That’s great, as these are two of the core goals for WAWs. We need to keep doing a “pure networking” event here and there. A challenge with those events is with the sponsorship — if we get a sponsor other than the Web Analytics Wednesday Global Sponsors, we really need to give them a forum to talk. All of our past sponsors have been great about not making their presentations “sales pitches” — we get good, practical content from them. But, they get to solidify their positions as experts in an area.

Dave Culbertson and I have discussed several times that WAWs seem to draw SEO/SEM-interested people as much as web analytics-interested people. The disciplines have a heavy overlap, so that’s not a surprise. The survey results back this up, so we will continue to incorporate search-oriented topics.

I was a bit surprised by the low number of people who indicated “find a job,” as it seems like I talk to one or two people each month who are between opportunities. That may be the result of an imperfectly sampled population.

And, it’s good to know that there’s a healthy interest in drinking good beer (although that puts a tough constraint on the venue selection, which I’ll touch on later).

WAW Scheduling

On a highly practical front, we occasionally get feedback that Wednesday evenings are a bad time for a person — we’ve had some past regulars who simply haven’t been able to attend due to commitments elsewhere on Wednesday evenings (pool league, hockey league, teaching CCD, etc.). When we first started WAWs in Columbus, we held them on Tuesdays for this very reason, but a survey last year showed a shift to Wednesdays would work better.

In this survey, Wednesday dinners did come out at the top of the pack:

Now, there very well may be survey bias in the responses to these questions, because we’ve been consistently holding WAWs on Wednesdays over happy hour/dinner, which means most of the people invited to participate in the survey had registered for an event at that time. But, that’s the only group I have easy access to in order to survey, so I’m running with it.

As one more check (and somewhat just for the data visualization challenge of it), I cross-tabbed these two questions and put it on a bubble chart:

Again, Wednesday dinners are the clear winner. What’s a little troubling is that only 2/3 of the respondents indicated this combination was good for them. We’ll have to grapple with that a bit — you can’t please all the people all the time, certainly, but we also don’t want to shut out people all the time due to structural conflicts. My take is that we can definitely steer clear of Fridays and we should stick with “after work” time slots. But, we may try mixing up the days of the week a bit.

Data visualization side note: the way I represented the data above works okay, I think, but it also is a good exercise in showing one of the reasons that pie charts are evil. The number inside each circle shows how many respondents had answers that fell in both categories. Compare the size of a “1” to the size of the “14” — does it look to you like the larger circle is fourteen times as big as the smaller one? It doesn’t to me. In this case, the bubbles have the values labeled inside of them, partly because the pure visualization seemed misleading. Human beings are notoriously bad at interpreting 2-dimensional areas.

Communication

We’ve got a wide range of ways we promote WAWs, so I wanted to get a sense as to which ones people preferred.

How do you prefer to stay informed of upcoming WAWs? The only surprise here was that “Running into Dave Culbertson” was at the bottom of the list! Of course, I didn’t ask Dave to mention to people he ran into that this survey was posted, so there’s that pesky survey bias again. We’ll keep up the e-mails (in almost two years of building up the Columbus WAW database, we’ve had a total of 2 opt outs, so I’ll keep the frequency of communication about the same, as it seems to be working).

Open-Ended Feedback

A number of respondents took the time to provide detailed thoughts on the event overall, and, specifically, on the request for other venue suggestions.

I have an infatuation with Wordle at the moment (specifically when it comes to certain types of online listening), which is one of those subjects for a future posts. Below is a wordle of the general feedback responses — I can’t help but smile when I look at it:

A summary of some of the specifics in the general feedback:

There were several suggestions that we occasionally have practitioners rather than vendors present: case studies, best practices, or even peer problem-solving sessions
There was a suggestion to try a round table or un-conference format around the state of SEM/SEO/analtyics
One respondent suggested a competition of sorts — having attendees bring their “best stuff” on a topic or a challenge; maybe even trying to have a prize of some sort to the “winner”
“If you could get Avinash Kaushik to speak that would be SWEET!”
One person noted that our topics tend to very consumer brand-oriented (which is true), and that it would be nice to have content that is more general and that could be applied to B2B
There was a pretty healthy level of general gushing about the quality and value of the event

One person noted in the general feedback that “I like Barleys as a venue- that room has nice square dimensions that keep the energy together- you can’t really get stuck off to the side.” We knew Barley’s was good, but this was a fresh perspective on one of the reasons as to “why.” On the “alternative venue suggestions” question, several people commented that any location needed to be central (as Barley’s is). The only specific alternative venue suggested was Spaghetti Warehouse, which we’ve used in the past. It is centrally located, and it has a pretty good meeting spot (we’ve been seated upstairs), and it’s quiet enough to have conversations. The two downsides are: 1) the area where it’s located (although they do have a security guard posted in the parking lot at all times), and 2) the beverage selection. One of the responses to the venue question was: “Anywhere with ‘Good Beer’!” Spaghetti Warehouse definitely falls short on that front, but at least it’s not entirely dry!

We may give that another shot.

Feedback Is ALWAYS Welcome

If you didn’t participate in the survey (or if you did but have other comments), please leave a comment or drop me an e-mail (“tim” at this site’s domain).

Analysis, Analytics Strategy

A Record-Setting WAW in Columbus with CRM Metrix

Posted on February 2, 2010October 25, 2019 by Eric Peterson

Last week’s Columbus set a new record for the meetup — we had exactly FIFTY attendees, which was a great showing. Part of the large draw was undoubtedly the event sponsor, CRM Metrix (@crm_metrix on Twitter).

Pre-Meal Networking (and a Friendly Wave from Jonghee!)

Hemen Patel, CRM Metrix CTO, facilitated a lively discussion about incorporating the voice of the customer in web site measurement and optimization.

Hemen Patel Presents

Hemen walked through a brief deck (below) that sparked some great back-and-forth with the crowd.

Hemen Patel CRM Metrix: Columbus WAW, Jan 27, 2010 http://static.slidesharecdn.com/swf/ssplayer2.swf?doc=hemenpatelcrmmetrixcolumbuswaw-100201142832-phpapp01&stripped_title=hemen-patel-crm-metrix-columbus-waw

View more presentations from CRM Metrix.

A Rapt Audience

Monish Datta Asks a Question

With a crowd of fifty people, not only did I not get to meet the first-time attendees, but I barely had a chance to say, “Hi” to some of the long-time regulars. I guess we’ll just have to have another one in February (I’m working on it!) so I’ll get that chance!

Analytics Strategy

Recap: Web Analytics Wednesday with Foresee Results

Posted on November 21, 2009October 25, 2019 by Eric Peterson

Last week was our monthly Web Analytics Wednesday in Columbus. Foresee Results sponsored the event and provided a highly engaging speaker: Kevin Ertell, Foresee’s VP of Retail Strategy and the blogger behind Retail: Shaken Not Stirred.

We had a good crowd — just under 30 people — and we did our usual half-hour of networking before sitting down to order food and cover the evening’s topic.

We had attendees from a wide range of companies: Nationwide Insurance, Resource Interactive, Victoria’s Secret (including Monish Datta…which I mention here solely for quasi-inside SEO joke purposes), DSW, Diaz & Kotsev Business (Web) Consulting, WebTech Analytics, Quest Software (makers of Foglight, actually, which I didn’t realize until I was writing the rest of this post), QStart Labs, Submerged Solutions, Bizresearch, Lightbulb Interactive, JoeMetric, Express, Cardinal Solutions, and various independent consultants. By my count, 30% of the attendees were first-timers, and the remaining attendees were a pretty even split between hard-core regulars and every-few-months dabblers.

Kevin is a great speaker — one of those guys whose use of PowerPoint is primarily to provide images that back up the stories he weaves.

One of the stories was the “tree stump on the conference room table” story, which was about how we get used to having odd, not-particularly-helpful aspects of our web sites that are jarring to first-time and infrequent visitors, but that we never think to address.

Tree Stump on a Conference Room Table

You can ping Kevin on Twitter directly for a more complete explanation on that analogy, if you want. If I try to recreate it entirely, I’ll butcher it for sure! I will take a shot at summarizing the four-step process Kevin laid out for going beyond web analytics data to drive site improvement, though, which was the meat of the presentation.

Step One: Ask Your Visitors for Feedback

On-site surveys provide valuable information, because they let you ask your visitors questions directly rather than simply trying to infer what it was they are trying to do, how successful they were at doing it, and how smooth the process was based strictly on behavioral data. Web analytics = bahavioral data. Survey data = attitudinal data. Got it?

Some of the highlights on this step:

Incentives aren’t needed to get people to take a 15-30 question survey — I think Kevin said they see something like 6-10% of the people who are offered a survey actually accept the offer (not all visitors to a site get offered the survey) and they’re able to build up an adequate sample fairly quickly in most cases
The way Foresee Results offers surveys, typically, is that they offer the survey when visitors arrive on the site, but then conduct the survey on exit
The wording of the survey questions matters — there are good/valid ways to word questions and there are bad/invalid ways to word questions; there are oodles of research and expertise on that subject, and it’s worth partnering with someone (a consultant, a company) who really knows the ins and outs on that front to make sure that the data you collect is valid
The Foresee Results secret sauce is that they ask questions that fall into three broad categories: 1) questions about different aspects of the site (content, functionality, navigation, search, etc.), 2) questions to gauge customer satisfaction (very precisely worded questions that are backed up by the research behind The American Customer Satisfaction Index — ACSI), and 3) questions to gauge likely future behavior (likelihood to purchase online, likelihood to purchase offline, likelihood of returning to the site, etc.). Foresee Results then uses an analytic model to link these three elements together: the first category as a dependent variable affecting customer satisfaction, and customer satisfaction, in turn, being a dependent variable affecting the various future behaviors. It’s a pretty nifty tool that I’ve been learning more about over the past few months. Powerful stuff.

This step, done right, gives you the basic diagnostics: where the most significant opportunities for driving improvements exist with your site.

Step Two: Augment Quantitative with Qualitative

This step is to augment the quantitative survey data with more qualitative information. The quantitative data can help you slice/segment the data so that you can review the responses to open-ended questions in a more meaningful way.

Presumably, these qualitative questions are ones that you update over time as you are identifying specific areas on which you want to focus. If for instance, you found out in Step One that the navigation was an area where your site scores low and also has a significant impact on customer satisfaction, then you might want to gather some qualitative data specifically regarding navigation, and you might want to break that out between people who came to the site expecting to make a purchase, as opposed to people who came to the site simply to do comparison shopping.

This sort of analysis will give you insight into the specific friction points on the site — what types of visitors hit them and what sorts of tasks they’re trying to accomplish when they do.

Step Three: Watch Customers (in a Focussed Manner)

This is a step that Kevin pointed out companies sometimes try to put first, which makes it unnecessarily expensive and time-consuming. The key here is to use the information from the first two steps to focus what you are going to observe and how. Various options for watching customers:

Session replay — what exactly did visitors on the site do and how; in the case of Foresee Results, these replays can be tied directly to specific survey respondents (pretty slick), but Tealeaf and Foglight are tools that provide replay functionality, too
Eye-tracking — this requires getting people into a lab of some sort, so, obviously, the more focussed you can get, the better
Usability testing — this may include eye-tracking, but it certainly doesn’t have to; obviously, there are benefits of being able to focus the usability testing, whether it’s conducted in a usability lab or even in-store

Now, you should really have a good handle on specifically what’s not working. But, what if you don’t really have any good ideas as to what to do about it? Then…

Step Four: Usability Audit

Work with usability experts to assess the aspects of your site that are underperforming. Arm them with what you have learned in the first three steps!

To me, it seems like you could swap steps three and four in some cases — let a usability expert audit your site and identify likely opportunities to improve the trouble spots.

Driving Continuous Incremental Improvement

By keeping the survey running on an on-going basis — adjusting questions as needed, but keeping the core questions constant — you can monitor the results of changes to the site as you roll them out. And, of course, your web analytics data — especially on-site conversion data — is one tool for monitoring if you are driving outcomes that matter.

One point on the incremental changes front: during the Q&A, Kevin talked about how sites that roll out major redesigns invariably see a temporary dip in results while visitors get used to the new site. Incremental changes, on the other hand, can occur without that temporary drop in performance.

Interesting stuff!

Analytics Strategy

SEO Tips and Thoughts at Web Analytics Wednesday

Posted on October 18, 2009October 25, 2019 by Eric Peterson

Last week’s Columbus Web Analytics Wednesday had something of an odd vibe, but it was also one of the most tactically informative ones that we’ve had to date! The crowd was smaller than usual — 18 attendees — due to a confluence of factors ranging from the influenza virus (not H1N1, as far as I know, but appropriate precautionary non-attendance by several people), to business travel to residential water line leaks, to touching-if-inconveniently-timed spousal romantic gestures! The silver lining is that, to a person, there was genuine regret about not being able to attend the event, which is a strong indication that our informal community of local analysts really has solidified. (Monish Datta was in attendance, so I am able to gratuitously make a reference to him — ask him or me at the next WAW what that is all about, if you don’t already know!)

As for the event itself, we welcomed a new sponsor — Resource Interactive. The topic for the event was search engine optimization (SEO) with a little bit of search engine marketing (SEM). It wasn’t the first time that we relied on Dave Culbertson of Lightbulb Interactive to present, and it likely will not be the last, as his knowledge and enthusiasm about SEO, SEM, and web analytics is both entertaining and informative!

Dave attended SMX East in New York the week before WAW, and he agreed to pull together the highlights of the sessions that he attended. One of my favorite tweets from Dave while he was at the conference was this one:

“Ended up leading a lunchtime discussion on web analytics at #smxeast. Web analytics and SEO – like peanut butter and chocolate!”

Partly because Dave is one of the organizers of Columbus Web Analytics Wednesday, and partly because, well, SEO/SEM and web analytics really should be integrated, “search” is a frequent cornerstone of our WAW topics. Dave’s presentation was titled SMX East 2009: The Spinal Tap Wrap-up. At least half of us (myself included) didn’t get the reference, while a solid quarter of the attendees immediately got it and thought it was quite clever and amusing. There were 11 slides in the deck, so:

The presentation focussed primarily on SEO tips, although there was some SEM here and there. An incomplete list of the nuggets/surprises that jumped out the most to me included:

PageRank sculpting — this is when you try to gently influence the Google PageRank for pages you control by making subtle, behind-the-scenes tweaks to both that page and other pages that you control that link to that page. Apparently, a somewhat common way to do this has been through the use of the NoFollow tag. While this may have worked at one point, Google now pretty much ignores the tag when it comes to assessing PageRank
rel=”canonical” — this is a biggie, especially when it comes to web analytics and campaign tracking; this is a tag that can be added to a page to specify the exact “preferred” URL for the page. It’s important because many pages get linked to or arrived at with one or many extraneous parameters tacked on to the end of the URL: campaign tracking parameters for the web analytics tool, link tracking information for the e-mail engine from which a user may access the page, session ID or user ID information for the application that is rendering the page to enable it to make subtle tweaks in the content, etc. The full adoption of this tag by Google, Yahoo! Search, and Bing should go a long way towards removing the tension that exists between the SEO person pushing for the removal of these parameters in links (to avoid link dilution) and the web analyst who pushes to add them (to improve tracking capabilities). Google put together a nice write-up and video on the canonical tag after SMX West.
keywords — this is “keywords for SEO,” rather than the SEM usage of the term. A lot of information was presented about studies as to where the appearance of a keyword had the most/least impact. Having the keyword in the domain name itself was great, but, of course, you’re not going to be able to do that for too many keywords! (I couldn’t help but thinking of Clearsaleing’s http://www.attributionmanagement.com/ site, though!) Even better is to have the keyword in the domain and in the directory path (i.e., http://www.keyword.com/keyword). Having the keyword in a subdomain (http://keyword.company.com) is apparently not very effective (there was a quick side discussion about an online shoe retailer — and I can’t remember which one it was and, ironically, can’t seem to put together the right Google search to figure it out — that tried creating a subdomain for very type of shoe they sold…which then helped trigger Google to make this not effective; I’m fuzzy on the specifics, obviously!) Another point here is that there is both the “what the search engine algorithm puts weight on keyword-wise” and the “how user behavior — which links users follow — is affected by keywords showing up in subdomains, domains, query parameters, etc.” factor — it’s hard to tease out which is which, so the studies have focussed more on “what actually happens” rather than “why it happens.”

At the end of the day, search engine optimization still comes down to providing great content in a way that users can easily navigate to it and consume it. Google’s algorithms are geared around making the same recommendations that a human being with an infinite knowledge of what content was where on the web would recommend in response to a question from another human being. SEO efforts need to focus on helping that theoretical human out — not trying to fool him/her!

I also distributed copies of the deck that Laura Thieme of Bizresearch presented at SMX East. That presentation was primarily SEM-focussed, but it also had some great nuggets in it. Unfortunately, Laura wasn’t able to attend WAW (see the first paragraph of this post!) this month. Laura presented at WAW back in July and really knows her way around SEM, so we missed having her there!

All in all, it was a good event!

Analytics Strategy, Social Media

Web Analytics Wednesday: A Segmentation Experiment

Posted on September 17, 2009October 25, 2019 by Eric Peterson

Last night was another great Web Analytics Wednesday in Columbus, courtesy of the Web Analytics Wednesday Global Sponsors (Analytics Demystified, SiteSpect, Coremetrics, and IQ Workforce). We had a respectable turnout of ~25 people (not including children) and a great time! And, all the better, I got to blind people with the flash on my new camera. A few of the highlights on the picture front:

Bryan Huber from huber+co. interactive and Jen Wells from TeamBuilder Search

Todd Ehlinger from Nationwide, Mike Amer from DSW, and Elaine F.

The Erics — Goldsmith from AOL and Diaz from Diaz & Kotsev Business Consulting (not shown: the THIRD Eric — Eric Moretti from Quest Software)

The picture that didn’t come out well was the one of Laura Thieme of BizResearch with her daughter, Melina — hanging out on her mom’s shoulder…and ‘nary a peep the whole evening (why couldn’t I have had one of those kids?!)! And (cliche warning) cute as a button! As it turned out, Melina wasn’t the only kid who made an appearance — Dave Culbertson’s sons were in attendance on the periphery for the first part of the evening as well.

Rather than a formal presentation, we did an interactive, get-to-know-each-other, have-a-chuckle activity — conceived of and coordinated by Dave Culbertson from Lightbulb Interactive. Unlike my attempts to photograph Melina and Laura — where I only took one shot and then figured the flash was just cruel — I kept clicking the shutter at Dave until he struck a sufficiently expressive pose:

What Dave walked us through was a segmentation exercise: he had a list of questions, each with four possible answers, and we had to segment / re-segment ourselves after each question by going to the area of the room designated for how we would answer that question. An incomplete list of the questions:

Where did you go for your undergraduate degree? a) Ohio State, b) not Ohio State, but another school in Ohio, c) not in Ohio, but in the U.S., or d) outside the U.S.
Which of the following most describes your opinion of social media? a) revolutionary, b) evolutionary, c) nothing new, or d) what’s social media?
If you were going to read only one book this month, what kind of book would it be? a) non-fiction business, b) non-fiction non-business, c) fiction non-science fiction, d) science fiction (or something like that)
If you took only one vacation this year, where would you most like to go? a) the beach, b) the mountains, c) a large city, d) Disneyland
What kind of car do you drive? a) American, b) European, c) Japanese, d) Korean

After we’d segment ourselves, Dave would ask a few follow-up questions of the group. It really did turn out to be a lot of fun (and, if you’re reading this post and recommended a book on that question, please leave a comment with the book you recommended! There sounded like some excellent reads there, and I wasn’t taking notes!)

For my part, I enjoyed getting folks’ take on the Omniture acquisition by Adobe. And, Bryan Huber mentioned what sounds like a pretty slick tool for <social media buzzword>online listening</social media buzzword> that factors in the influence of the person who commented about your brand as well as what they said — another part of the evening where I wasn’t taking notes (but, come on, the pictures ARE fabulous, right?).

So, that’s the hasty recap of the evening. By the time this post publishes, I’ll be on my descent into Boston for a lonnnnng weekend with Mrs. Gilligan:

(And, for you, Eric G., none of the photos used in this post were subjected to post-processing other than cropping. There’s no way I’m going to be able to stick with that, though!)

Analytics Strategy

Monish Datta Stays on the Vegetarian Wagon (Sort of) at WAW

Posted on August 16, 2009October 25, 2019 by Eric Peterson

I’ve officially dropped off the first page of results for a Google search for Monish Datta. Further proof that SEO is an on-going process! Monish made a crack last year that this blog was going to start dominating search results for his name. I took his wisecrack and ran with it! “Dominate” has never really happened, but I did briefly climb into the top 5 of organic results a few months ago.

From Monish’s tweets, a handful of us knew he had gone vegetarian a few weeks ago, and no one (Monish included) knew how he would fare at a barbecue joint. As it turned out, he ordered fish, which he said was good enough to count as staying on the veggie wagon. Laura Thieme asked if Monish had actually tweeted about what he was eating. Indeed, he has!

Although I wasn’t cognizant of it as I was reading his tweets, Monish has provided fodder to Twitter critics who equate “tweeting about what you eat” to public navel-gazing. The question is: will he now become self-conscious about it, or, rather, will he go to the other extreme and provide detail at every meal? I’m sorta’ hoping for the latter.

Yes, There Was Actually a Topic Beyond Monish’s Diet and Twitter Usage

This month’s event was sponsored by IQ Workforce. Corry Prohens made the trip to central Ohio to present on what he is seeing on the jobs/careers front for web analysts and search marketers.

Highlights of the presentation included:

The Good News: internet retailers and online advertising have both continued to grow throughout the current economic downturn
The Bad News: there are more people chasing fewer full-time web analytics jobs, and there are fewer remote/virtual office positions and less willingness/need on the part of companies to relocate candidates to fill positions
Many people find their way into web analytics as a complement to another role: SEM, SEO, digital media analytics, offline marketing analytics, research/qualitative analysis, BI, etc. Having this complementary skillset clearly identified and articulated can be useful in a job search
Contracting has its pros (high demand, usually more money, more flexibility, less politics) and its cons (the need to always be selling, limited “depth” with any project/company, travel often required, administrative headaches, and it can be hard to go back to a non-contracting role)
When trying to hire a web analyst, work directly with the recruiter (don’t use an HR intermediary), write the job description yourself, be clear as to “needs” vs. “wants,” and choose a recruiter with expertise in the area you are hiring

A handful of resources that Corry provided for anyone who is looking to more effectively manage their career in web analytics:

Job board consolidators such as Indeed and Simply Hired
IQ Blast — the excellent e-newsletter that IQ Workforce produces
The Web Analytics Association
Analytics Demystified (Eric Peterson’s company)
Newsletters (besides IQ Blast):
- Internet Retailer
- WebGuild Searchnomics (Dave Culbertson was floored that he and Corry were the only two people in attendance who were subscribers to this one)
- ClickZ

My one addition would be WebSight, Stratigent’s monthly newsletter.

Attendees from Far and Wide

As I wandered around the room chatting with attendees, I realized we probably had our widest geographic reach of any of our Columbus WAWs to date:

Portland, Oregon — Noé Garcia from Webtrends (a Columbus WAW sponsor several times over)
Cincinnati, Ohio — Cindy Rabkin from Web Tech Analytics
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania — Steve Colon from Webtrends
Long Island, New York — Corry Prohens from IQ Workforce
Durham, North Carolina — several attendees from McKinney

Locally, we had had attendees from Acappella, AOL, Bizresearch, Cardinal Solutions, Cisco, Highlights for Children, JPMorgan Chase, Lightbulb Interactive, Nationwide, Ohio Historical Society, Real Estates’s SEO, Resource Interactive, Victoria’s Secret, and a few others that I probably missed (note to self: a sign-in sheet would really be helpful!)

We had a good set of mingling/mixing before and after:

Cheng Deng and Todd Greene

Dave Culbertson and Steve Krause

Monish Datta, Karen Schneider, Bill Carey, Jen Elliott, Andrew Blank, and Steve Colon

Noé Garcia and Eric Moretti

Franklin Gbenah and Carol Fleming

What’s Next?

Our next WAW is tentatively slated for September 16, 2009, but I have yet to secure a sponsor. Let me know if you can help on that front — I’ll pursue any lead!

Analytics Strategy

Columbus WAW July 2009 Recap — Bizwatch and More!

Posted on July 19, 2009October 25, 2019 by Eric Peterson

We had another great Columbus Web Analytics Wednesday last week at Barley’s Smokehouse and Brewpub. This month’s sponsors were Bizresearch and the Web Analytics Wednesdays Global Sponsors. We had right at 30 people attending:

Laura Thieme of Bizresearch presented on search marketing and the challenges of trend analysis therein. She walked through one in-depth case study and sprinkled examples from other clients into the discussion as well.

Bizresearch has a product called Bizwatch that, when combined with some fundamental best practices of SEO and SEM, looks like it can yield some handy insights in a hurry! Laura is a self-professed constant tinkerer with her presentations, but I think the one below is pretty close to what she walked us through:

Bizwatch Search Analytics Solving PPC & SEO Problemswith Bizwatch http://static.slidesharecdn.com/swf/ssplayer2.swf?doc=bizwatchsearchanalytics-solvingppcseoproblemswithbizwatch-090706000851-phpapp02&stripped_title=bizwatch-search-analytics-solving-ppc-seo-problemswith-bizwatch

View more presentations from Laura Thieme.

As the group grows, I’m finding that the evenings wind down and there are people I didn’t even get to say “Hi” to — both new attendees and long-timers. But, some of the discussions I had included:

Chatting more in-depth with Chris Dooley of Foresee Results. I’m looking forward to a future WAW when Chris will be challenging the group to think about the offline and post-visit behavior of site visitors and how often that doesn’t get considered by internet marketers. I also picked up a new blog to follow, as Chris mentioned that Kevin Ertell had joined Foresee Results and recommended his www.retailshakennotstirred.com blog. Ertell only started the blog last month, so it remains to be seen if it has legs. So far, his posts look to be pretty in-depth and grounded in real experience. Chris also mentioned that Eric Peterson wrote a white paper for Foresee Results, which had me poking around on the White Papers area of their site — it looks like there are some really good reads there! I’m not sure which one Eric wrote…so I may just have to download several of them!
Chris also mentioned a new “session replay” tool that Foresee Results just introduced called CS Session Replay. It sounds like a direct threat to Tealeaf, but it is apparently wayyyyy slicker. I don’t know if Chris (right below) was extolling the virtues of the product to Scott Zakrajsek of Victoria’s Secret or not. They might have just been discussing who put those half-drunk beers down next to the glasses of water they were drinking…

I chatted with Paul Hall of the Mastery Marketing Group about the work they’re doing to drive a “360 degree view of the customer” using data from multiple systems (CRM and other). That discussion led to me bringing up Webtrends, Omniture, and Eloqua all as tools that I know of that have very real capability to do user-level tracking and analysis of web activity.
Our “farthest travelled to attend” award (not really an award…just me pondering after the fact) went to Kim Merritt-Butler of TheURLdr.com. Kim was in town from Cumberland, Maryland, and is very interested in getting a similar group started up in the Washington, D.C. area. So, if you know of anyone in that area whom Kim should get in touch with, please let me know and I’ll pass the information along! We were both surprised that there is not already a WAW — even an older/dormant one — in that area already.
I didn’t get to chat with him much, but Gareth Dismore could’ve made a case that he’d actually travelled the farthest, as he’s now based in Colorado Springs with SearchSpring. He was back in town for a couple of weeks, and he didn’t move away long enough ago to count. Or so I decided. After the fact. For an award that exists merely as a construct within this blog post.
I talked to several people who were new to web analytics — were starting to see it crop up and are attending WAWs as a way to dip their toes in the water (which is a great place to start!). I found myself giving my standard recommendations on that front: Occam’s Razor blog, Eric Peterson’s Analytics Demystified blog, and Web Analytics: An Hour a Day. I know scads of blogs and books have cropped up over the past few years…but these still nail the basics, IMHO.

I wrapped up the evening with a lengthy discussion in the parking lot with Bryan Cristina and headed home thinking Thursday was going to come awfully quick. Then I spent an hour getting my neighbor’s garage door unmangled, as she’d backed into it with her minivan before it was fully open and was leaving on vacation the next morning. I am clearly not as young as I used to be, as I didn’t fully recover until I cratered at 9:45 PM on Thursday night and got in a solid eight hours!

Next month’s Columbus WAW is already scheduled. It will be on August 12th at 6:30 PM, again at Barley’s Smokehouse and Brewpub. The event is being sponsored by IQ Workforce, and Corry Prohens will be presenting on job hunting and career management in web analytics and search marketing. I hope to see you there!

Analytics Strategy

Columbus Web Analytics Wednesday — July 2009 with Bizresearch

Posted on June 30, 2009October 25, 2019 by Eric Peterson

Web Analytics Wednesdays are an opportunity for full-time web analysts, part-time web analysts, and anyone who is interested in learning more about web analytics to get together and share their experiences! We will informally network for a bit before sitting down and ordering food, at which point we will have a brief presentation/discussion about Bizwatch led by Laura Thieme.

Details:

When: Wednesday, July 15th at 6:30 PM

Where: Barley’s Smokehouse and Brewpub, 1130 Dublin Road, Columbus, OH 43215

Registration: the Web Analytics Wednesday site

How to find us: We have a room reserved — just go to the back of Barley’s and hang a right

We are excited to welcome a new sponsor this month! Bizresearch will be co-sponsoring the event with the Web Analytics Wednesdays Global Sponsors. The sponsors will be covering food and nonalcoholic beverages only, although you are welcome (and encouraged) to sample Barley’s fine offering of frothy beverages on your own tab.

Laura Thieme, a 12-year search marketing and analytics veteran, has developed a new search analytics application: Bizwatch. Observing the challenges of monthly trend search marketing reporting and analysis, she developed a new application that combines SEO, competitors, keyword research, paid search and web analytics. It focuses on data integration amongst the three areas of search marketing. It focuses on trend analysis and keywords that convert.

Thieme is looking for feedback from industry colleagues on the search analytics application. She is also hoping to hear from search marketers regarding monthly reporting, applications they are using, and other search analytics data integration challenges they are experiencing.

It should be an engaging discussion!

Analytics Strategy, Social Media

Columbus Web Analytics Wednesday Meets #fiestamovement

Posted on June 4, 2009October 25, 2019 by Eric Peterson

Last night was the monthly Columbus Web Analytics Wednesday at Barley’s Smokehouse and Brewpub, and we were fortunate to have Webtrends sponsor for the second time this year! This time, we managed to get it scheduled in a way that lined up with Noé Garcia‘s travel plans, so he wore the dual crown of “Traveled Farthest to the Event” (from Portland, OR) and “Sponsor Representative.” The dual crown looked surprisingly like an empty beer glass:

Noe and Bryan Cristina of Nationwide co-facilitated a discussion about going beyond the application of web analytics tools within the confines of the tool itself. The most active discussion on that front was spawned by one of the regular participants in the group who works at a major, Columbus-based online retailer. Not necessarily this guy, but maybe it was him. My lips are sealed.

We talked about how web analytics data, tied to order information, and then matched back to offline marketing channels such as printed catalogs, can be very effective at driving marketing efficiency. In the examples that triggered the discussion, as well as from the other participants’ experiences, the consensus was that, while the ideal world would have all of this data hooked together automatically…rolling up your sleeves and tying the data together manually can still yield a substantial payback. Part of the discussion got into volume — for companies that do a lot of direct mail-oriented promotion, using web analytics data to cut the mail volume by even a fraction of a percent (by using that data to better target who does/does not respond to printed mail) can provide significant and quantifiable savings for a company.

I didn’t think I’d ever hear anyone at a WAW say “Zip+4” (that’s shorthand for the 5-digit zip code plus the four additional digits that you see on a lot of your mail)…other than me! But I did! The person who said that may or may not be a different person pictured in the photo above. Again…my lips are sealed!

And…Ford’s Fiesta Movement

Dave Culbertson, a WAW promotional channel unto himself, kicked off an entirely different, but equally intriguing discussion:

It all started as Dave was driving his Mazda in Grandview a couple of weeks ago. He got quasi-cut off by a 2011 Ford Fiesta two cars ahead of him. That prompted this tweet:

Now, Dave regularly mocks people who promote themselves as being social media gurus/experts/mavens…but he’s one of the most social media savvy marketers I know. He also knows his cars. For one of those reasons (or maybe both) he immediately recognized that the car in front of him was part of Ford’s Fiesta Movement so he nailed a very relevant hashtag with his tweet. As it happened, someone else on Twitter saw the tweet, quickly realized who the likely culprit was, tweeted to her, and she wound up apologizing via Twitter less than an hour after the incident!

Ms. Single Mama is a popular blogger, and this was the first time that she and Dave met in person. Everyone was curious about her Ford Fiesta agent experience. She obliged us by explaining, and, later, a good chunk of us headed out to the parking lot to see the 2011 Ford Fiesta she is driving for six months:

Yes, we had name tags. Yes, the intial group that followed Alaina out to look at her car was entirely male. Yes, all told, about twice as many people as this wound up checking out the car. And, finally, yes, Alaina made a call in the midst of this picture! Andrew (far left) commented that the dashboard looked like the head of a Transformer. He…was right!

Dave even demonstrated his social media hipness by snapping a picture of the vehicle with his iPhone and then tweeting it:

All in all, it was an engaging, informative evening. I’m sure I’ll miss some of the companies that were represented, but they included JPMorgan Chase, Nationwide, Victoria’s Secret Online, Webtrends, Clearsaleing, Bath&Body Works, Cardinal Solutions, Highlights for Children, Rosetta, Foresee Results, Acappella Limited, DK Business Consulting, Lightbulb Interactive…and others! Not. A. Bad. Crowd!

The next WAW will be July 15th. We’re working hard to get our calendar for the rest of the year nailed down, which means we are looking for sponsors and presenters. Please contact me at tim at <this domain> if you are interested on either front.

Conferences/Community

Columbus Web Analytics Wednesday: A Speedy April

Posted on April 25, 2009October 25, 2019 by Eric Peterson

We had our monthly Web Analytics Wednesday meetup at Barley’s Smokehouse and Brewpub last week. Once again, the Web Analytics Wednesday Global Sponsors (Coremetrics, Analytics Demystified, and SiteSpect) sponsored the event, which is always appreciated!

This month, in lieu of a formal topic, Dave Culbertson facilitated a round of speed networking — like speed dating, but with the purpose of driving interaction beyond everyone’s immediate tablemates. Each round lasted for 1 minute, and the main challenge was getting people to stop talking and shift on to the next person! It was a little intense, but Dave cut it off after 15-20 minutes, and the overwhelming consensus was that it was fun and useful!

At the end of the exercise, Dave commented that he really hoped we could start extending these 1:1 connections and interactions through social media. As it is, Dave (@daveculbertson) is one of the most interesting people I follow on Twitter, especially when it comes to finding and tweeting links to content that I find interesting and informative. We’d actually thought ahead (if “six hours before the event” counts as “ahead”) and made a sign-up sheet that included a space for the attendees to write their Twitter usernames and indicate if it would be okay to post them. I then proceeded to leave the sign-in sheet behind when I left! Something about Barley’s — last month, I left my notebook behind and had to go and retrieve it the next day (2 beers over 2.5 hours plus a full meal…in case you’re wondering — it’s just something in the air there!).

So, instead, we’re broadening our social media presence. Consider joining one or all of the following, depending on where/how you hang out on the ‘net:

Facebook — we’ve had a WAW Columbus group there for some time
Twitter Group — this was Dave’s suggestion, and I haven’t used twittgroup.com before, but we’ve now got a cbuswaw group there as well
LinkedIn — might as well kick it old school, too, so we’ve now got a Columbus WAW LinkedIn group

Pick your poison, one or all!

Overall, the event had a great mix of both practicing web analysts (from companies like Resource Interactive, Highlights for Children, Victoria’s Secret, Lightbulb Interactive, Coldwell Banker, …and I’m just rattling off the companies I can remember, so this is an incomplete list) as well as some web analytics-centric companies: BizResearch, ClearSaleing, SearchSpring, and WebTech Analytics (all the way up from Cincinnati!). And, with a handful of sharp people in the crowd who are currently looking for full-time work, it was great that TeamBuilder Search came out as well! From a quick count of faces in my brain, the attendance broke down to be ~25% first-timers, ~25% loooonnnngg-time attendees, and 50% who have attended 1-5 times before. All in all, a great mix!

The most-interesting-but-random site/tool that I learned about this month was City-Data.com — think The World Factbook, but for U.S. cities rather than for countries! And, with a slew of charts that are pretty clean and provide a pretty good way to get the flavor of a town — weather, jobs, houses, and so on.

Analytics Strategy

Columbus Web Analytics Wednesday: April 22, 2009

Posted on April 15, 2009October 25, 2019 by Eric Peterson

In the interest of not messing with a good thing, we’re returning to Barley’s Smokehouse and Brewpub this month for our regular gathering of full-time, part-time, and just-generally-interested web analyst types.

We had a great turnout last month, and we’re on pace to match that this month, which means we’re needing to go easy on the Web Analytics Wednesday Global Sponsors. Rather than asking them to cover the full bill, we’re just having them cover the food and having everyone be on their own for beverages, which is still a wickedly good deal!

We’ve gotten feedback in the past that it’s good to have every second or third meetup be presentation-free, and this month will be one of those. However, we are looking into doing a little post-dinner speed networking — it’ll be quick, and we’ll find out whether it works or not. The inimitable Dave Culbertson of Lightbulb Interactive is running point on that and has been noodling around as to the best approach. It should be fun!

The details:

When: Wednesday, April 22nd at 6:30 PM

Where: Barley’s Smokehouse and Brewpub (1130 Dublin Road, Columbus, OH)

RSVP: http://tinyurl.com/AprilWAW

I hope to see you there!

And, if you, or anyone you know, would be interested in sponsoring a future Columbus Web Analytics Wednesday, please drop me a line at tim at gilliganondata.com. Our sponsorship flexibility is unparalleled in the industry — think rhythmic gymnastics meets Reed Richards. It’s a great way to get high visibility in a group of elite local marketing professionals. It’s a great way to support Columbus as a hotbed of web analytics thought leadership. It’s good karma.

Analytics Strategy

A Record-Setting Web Analytics Wednesday in Columbus

Posted on March 19, 2009October 25, 2019 by Eric Peterson

It turns out, as I’ve been looking at my records (read: old blog posts), that this month’s Columbus Web Analytics Wednesday marked our one year anniversary, which means it was our 13th WAW. As we were discussing it last night, we thought next month was the one-year mark, but, in a post from last May, I referenced that gathering as our third, and the Internet just doesn’t lie!

It’s only taken a year, but we just might have hit upon the perfect spot: Barley’s Smokehouse and Brewpub. For a nominal fee, we were able to reserve a room, which gave us some real volume control when we got into the group discussion portion of the evening, and there’s plenty of room for future expansion. As it was, the final headcount was 28 people, which was right around 50% higher than we’ve ever had before. Credit for that goes to:

WebTrends, our sponsor for the evening — we finally got some folk to come out who have been meaning to in the past, but haven’t quite made it; some of those people are WebTrends user; unfortunately, due to a scheduling conflict, Noe Garcia, the WebTrends account executive who supported our sponsorship request, wasn’t able to make the trip from Portland for the event.
Webtrends, who provided the evening’s speaker/topic — John Defoe, VP of Solution Services and A Bunch of Other Stuff, kicked off a discussion about using web analytics data outside of the web analytics environment; more on that in a bit.
The Amazing Blanqueras — we had some repeats who discovered us through past WAW promotions on Columbus Tech Life Meetup site, and we again brought in some fresh faces from the site; as Columbus Tech Life grows, so will WAW!
Dave Culbertson — ‘nary a WAW goes by that someone isn’t there because Dave ran into them and encouraged them to attend
Twitter — a number of people tweeted about the event, but my unofficial observations put Jenny Wells of TeamBuilder Search as the lead tweeter on that front

Other than that, we ran our usual gamut of promotions, and,presumably,picked up people through those channels as well. I’m sure we picked up a person or two who was Googling Monish Datta and wound up on this site (I’m up in the top 5 results for a Google search for Monish — I don’t think I’m ever going to overtake his LinkedIn profile). Feel free to take a crack about a WAW blog post not having definitive data on traffic sources…

As to the topic, John kicked off the discussion by sharing some examples of WebTrends customers who are using web analytics data beyond the web analytics environment:

A motorcycle manufacturer who uses web analytics data to score leads (site visitors) before passing them on to their dealers for follow-up — giving the dealers a prioritized list of who is more likely to be ready to buy
A media site that uses web analytics data to do an hourly refresh of the “most popular articles” on its home page (which led to a $2 million uplift in ad revenue, if I heard correctly) — I’ve always wondered how much that sort of functionality gets hit by a feedback loop (an article just barely cracks the “most popular” list, but, then, by being on the list, it gets more clicks and remains there), but I didn’t get a chance to ask
A company that uses web analytics data for targeted re-marketing via e-mail — identifying what content a person has viewed and using that to tailor e-mails promoting the same or similar products

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John used those examples as a way to launch discussions of where others are using web analytics data outside of the web analytics environment:

I chimed in with my experiences with using web analytics data for lead scoring that combines web activity data with CRM information and then pushes the lead score into the CRM system
Scott Zakrajsek briefly explained out Victoria’s Secret uses web analytics data for targeted e-mail re-marketing
Bryan Cristina shared a Nationwide: Car Insurance example…that I totally missed (um…they’re my employer; you’d think I would’ve paid more attention there!)

The wrap-up thoughts, I think, could be summarized as follows:

Soooooo many companies aren’t even trying to do any of these sorts of things today
It won’t be long before these sorts of uses of web analytics data will be a must-have rather than a cutting-edge differentiation opportunity
It sounds easy enough, but, when you get down to it, getting different systems to really talk to each other (or to build a layer to pass information back and forth between them in a meaningful way) takes some roll-up-your-sleeves hard work and the tenacity to stick with it until it works
Having an engaged executive sponsor is darn near a must to pull these off
Having someone driving the project who really, really “gets it” makes things go a lot smoother…but outsourcing is a viable option

If you’re interested in learning more, it’s not too late to book a trip to Vegas for WebTrends Engage ’09! John’s got a whole session on this basic subject on Wednesday, April 8th.

If you’re interested in sponsoring a future Web Analytics Wednesday, drop me a line at tim at gilliganondata.com!

Analytics Strategy

Columbus Web Analytics Wednesday: March 18, 2009

Posted on March 8, 2009October 25, 2019 by Eric Peterson

We’re a week later than maybe would’ve been ideal, but our sponsors are coming all the way from Portland, Oregon, and I expect it to be worth the wait! WebTrends will be sponsoring the event, and Noé Garcia (Strategic Account Executive) and John Defoe (VP of Solution Services) will be attending in person. John will be presenting and facilitating the topic for the evening: “Web analytics data beyond the web analytics platform.” This is a hot topic in a lot circles and includes, in my mind:

Integrating user-level web behavior into a CRM system to provide Sales with greater insight into the interests of specific prospects and customers (this is standard Eloqua functionality…but don’t read that as me thinking Eloqua offers a remotely robust web analytics solution)
Using user-level web behavior to score leads (in conjunction with non-web analytics data) to improve the lead qualification and lead nurturing process
Closing the loop and using web analytics insights to dynamically drive relevant web content — something that lots of people talk and wave their hands about…but that is extremely hard to actually build in a way that really works

I’m sure there are other aspects of this topic. I, for one, am looking forward to hearing John’s thoughts on the subject.

As to the details:

When: Wednesday, March 18th at 6:30 PM

Where: Barley’s Smokehouse and Brewpub (1130 Dublin Road, Columbus, OH)

RSVP: http://tinyurl.com/Mar09WAW

I’m looking forward to the new venue. We continue to struggle to find a place that has a suitably decent food and drink menu, is suitably centrally located, and is suitably non-noisy for us to be able to handle a presentation and discussion. Dave Culbertson, one of the co-organizers of the event, suggested Barley’s, and two other organizers responded enthusiastically (with the e-mail equivalent of a V8-style self-applied palm to the forehead), so I’m optimistic.

I’m hoping we have a good turnout!

Analytics Strategy

Monish Datta: "I can’t believe Sasha skipped WAW for the US-Mexico World Cup Qualifier!"

Posted on February 12, 2009October 25, 2019 by Eric Peterson

Actually, THAT’s almost a direct quote. Sarcastic as it may be. We were actually competing with a US-Mexico World Cup qualifying match that was being played in Columbus (in some crazy weather…but I’m getting ahead of myself). The US won 2-0, for what it’s worth, and I’m sure Sasha enjoyed the game. I’ll get an update next month!

This month’s WAW was something of a last-minute adventure. We once again had the event sponsored by the Web Analytics Wednesday Global Sponsors, and we had a drawing for a WASP for Analyst license, which David Ruen won. I’ve got to give a tip of the hat to Sandy and Ben Blanquera for the amazing work they’ve done getting Columbus Tech Life up and running, as we continue to bring in a few fresh faces from the Columbus Tech Life Meetup postings for WAW.

The real adventure this month was that Columbus had projected high winds for Wednesday evening. And, as the day progressed, there were rumors floating around about a Level 2 Storm Alert and 60 mph winds. After a brief flurry of e-mails, we decided that we would go ahead and have WAW, and I sent out a quick note to that effect, but let people know not to worry if they’d registered but then weren’t going to make it due to the weather. Power is still out in some neighborhoods in the area a full day later — the wind lived up to the hype.

I was heading to the event in between one wet-windy-heavy storm and what later turned out to be mostly just high winds storm and caught a pretty spectactular double rainbow out my window. Lucky for me, I was heading to WAW, so had more than just my Blackberry available to snag a picture!

We tried another new venue this month — Bar Louie in the Arena District. And, overall…too loud (a common theme). But, good food and good drink, topped off with a good crowd (we rattled off seven people who intended to come and then didn’t either because of a last-minute conflict or the weather):

Ironically, Monish Datta — the target of my running gag to make this site dominate organic searches for his name — is almost entirely obscured behind Brian in this picture.

The new faces this month included:

A co-founder of SearchSpring, which is an ASP site search tool geared towards small- to medium-sized e-commerce sites
The founder/owner of Jones Insight, a customer and marketing analytics consulting firm
A couple of folk from Bizresearch, which has developed a service for providing easy-to-understand SEO/SEM reporting
A jack-of-all-things-web-marketing marketer from Scotts

And, oh dear, I’m just not going to get into listing where everyone was from. As always, it was interesting to watch the interactions — the people who realized they actually had worked with each other, but only over the phone, the people who had 2 degrees of separation from each other, and, of course, the web analytics chatter.

Due to the noise level, we only did a half-hearted attempt to run our planned round table question of, “What is the most interesting (or entertaining…or terrifying) example of MISinterpretation of web analytics data you have seen?” We got a few chucklers:

The company that had spent a lot of development time and money to roll out a new feature on their home page. The analytics showed that 0.03% of the visitors to the home page were using the feature. The analyst who provided that insight got a call from the person who had championed the development. She told him, “Thanks so much for that data. It helped me justify keeping that feature on the home page!” The analyst wondered…how?!
A related example from a different participant. He had a client who had a “My” feature on their home page — a “My Favorites”-type of link-saving feature on the site. They were just about to spend $15,000 (and it was a fairly small company) to have someone update the feature. The analyst spent 5 minutes demonstrating that there was virtually no actual use of the feature, and the updates they were planning weren’t really geared towards that, anyway. The project got canned. Hmmm… turns out that wasn’t a misuse of web analytics at all, was it? Well, we are a wild and crazy bunch, so we let the rebels say their piece.
The time that a product manager who did a lot of self-service on the web analytics front saw a sudden 10X increase in visits to one of his product pages several weeks after he made some minor content updates for SEO purposes. He showed the results to his manager, then he shared them with the VP of Marketing, then he shared them in a large staff meeting. He developed quite a spiel about his SEO results. Then he shared the data with the web analyst, who immediately applied one of his favorite filters: the “common sense” filter. It took some digging to find out that the web infrastructure team was testing a new web site monitoring service…and that page was one of the pages they used for the test. And the company was using a log-based analytics package. And the user agent for the monitoring service wasn’t being filtered. The step function was entirely bogus.

The event started to wind down earlier than normal. I was drifting out myself after 2.5 hours. Dave and Andrew had started to head out earlier, but had gotten engrossed in a conversation and wound up sitting down to finish it. As I walked out, I got engrossed in their conversation. A half-hour later, as I started to leave (again), I realized that a number of Deloitte consultants who I work with had drifted in to watch the UNC-Duke basketball game. I wandered over for a quick, “Hey”…and didn’t leave until 11:15.

Which is why I’m going to end this post here and go to bed!

Analytics Strategy

Win a WASP v1.09 for Analyst license at Web Analytics Wednesday

Posted on February 2, 2009October 25, 2019 by Eric Peterson

It hardly seems like it’s been a month since the last Web Analytics Wednesday in Columbus! Maybe that’s because it hasn’t been, but it’s that time again anyway!

Come share food and drink with a group of above-average people who are interested in and working with web analytics. A good time will be had by all…and this will be the first Columbus WAW with a door prize!

Jumping right to the details:

When: Wednesday, February 11th at 6:30 PM

Where: Bar Louie in the Arena District (504 N Park Street)

RSVP: http://tinyurl.com/WAWFeb09

Format

We got rave reviews about last month’s format where we went around the table and asked a question about web analytics (read a summary at http://tinyurl.com/WAWJan09), so we’re going to give that approach another shot this month. This month’s question:

“What is the most interesting (or entertaining…or terrifying) example of MISinterpretation of web analytics data you have seen?”

Answering the question is entirely optional — if you are new to web analytics or simply have had nothing but the most sophisticated of business partners, then a “Pass” is an entirely acceptable answer.

What’s this WASP v1.09 door prize?

WASP is the Web Analytics Solutions Profiler — a Firefox extension that comes in handy in oodles of ways when it comes to sniffing out issues, debugging deployment problems, and generally just snooping around web pages to see what’s what on the tagging front. Read more at: http://webanalyticssolutionprofiler.com/. We’ll be conducting a drawing for an Analyst license (a $49 value) at the event.

As always, please forward this post along to your friends and colleagues who are interested in web analytics. The more the merrier!

Analytics Strategy, Social Media

Monish Datta: "It was the best WAW yet!"*

Posted on January 22, 2009October 25, 2019 by Eric Peterson

Another month, another Web Analytics Wednesday (WAW) in Columbus. We had two sponsors — both the Web Analytics Wednesday Global Sponsors and Lightbulb Interactive, which was nifty. And, we headed back to O’Shaughnessy’s Public House because, by golly, we just knew if we gave them enough chances they could get up to batting .500 when it came to screwing up our reservations. They succeeded by having no record of our event in “the book.” We made do nonetheless.

The turnout was slightly below normal — we wound up with eleven people all told — but we tried a new format for the discussion that worked out well! Although the group was small, it was a good mix of people: web analysts from major financial institutions, web designers, SEM and web analytics types in online retail, a horse racing marketer, and a slightly-crazy-but-always-entertaining developer from an interactive agency:

The format for the formal part of the discussion was going around the table and asking everyone (who was willing) to describe the report or type of report that they felt was the most worthless or irrelevant, and then to also describe the type of report that they could not get or that was unduly difficult to get that they felt would be most useful. In other words — cheap and easy blog fodder for me! The results…

Most Worthless/Irrelevant Reports

“Hits” reports — we agreed that two cases where this wasn’t a worthless metric were: 1) error logging (e.g., missing images), and 2) server load monitoring; a late arrival proceeded to state how many hits she had to her company’s web site last year. Doh! She actually had a good recovery by proposing a third valid use: when your site is selling sponsorships and you need the biggest number you can find. Okay, so “valid” is a stretch here. Marketers. Yecchhhh! 🙂
Overlay reports — great eye candy for the vendor when they’re selling a web analytics product, but notoriously inaccurate, can’t handle links in Flash, require a lot of very careful link creation on the page that’s going to run the overlay to make sure all links are unique (which hurts SEO), and don’t work for pages that have their content updated with any regularity (when trying to look at an overlay from “two weeks ago;” Bryan provided us with an amusing medley of impersonations of business users asking questions about this sort of report
Average time on page — this prompted some debate, but the general agreement, I think, was that the problem with this report is that many, many people use it without understanding its shortcomings (which Avinash covered in detail early last year in a blog post).
Path reports — again, we had general agreement that it’s the persistent myth that a significant percentage of visitors to a site will follow the exact same path through the site that is the killer (I call that the “people are cows myth“); we walked through the various alternatives that do have value — single-level paths to/from a page, bucketing of types of pages, looking at combinations of pages visited but not worrying so much about sequence, etc.
Geographic overlays — they have their uses in some very specific cases, but they really don’t warrant being on the main page of any tool’s dashboard

My favorite from the “worst” discussion, though, was this: “Any report provided without context.” That one from the aforementioned slightly-crazy-but-always-entertaining developer.

Most Wanted or Wanted-With-Less-Work

These reports got a bit more philosophical, but it was a good list nonetheless, with some common themes:

Several people brought up the need to marry web analytics data to other marketing channels as a biggie; they provided examples of where they had or were in the process of doing this in some fashion, but the beef was with how painful it was; this also headed down a tangential discussion of “attribution” — siloed marketing channels lead to each channel vying for as much credit as possible when they “touched” someone who converted to a sale at some point; I think we all ordered another drink in the midst of this discussion, and the lively discussion took a slightly maudlin turn. But the drinks arrived, and we recovered.
Forward attribution combined with segmentation — this was actually related to the prior one, and I scribbled it down as soon as Scott threw it out…but now realize it went totally over my head. Maybe he’ll elaborate in a comment on this post (after he nails down the venue for next month’s WAW, of course).
Form abandonment — this was one where it wasn’t that it’s not doable, it’s that it takes a lot of work to pull it off effectively. Well worth the effort, but would get more use if it was easier to set up.
Onsite search — this is akin to the form abandonment one, in that it’s a really useful set of data to look at, but, all too often, is tricky to get set up in a way that makes it practical to use
Social media integration with web analytics — this one is a result of the decentralized nature of social media, so much of what we’d want to integrate isn’t happening on sites that we “control.”

Other discussions/topics/mentions of note from my end of the table:

Dave went from being a social media skeptic less than a year ago to being an active user and evangelist. He’s even speaking on the subject in Cleveland next month (although he hasn’t yet plugged that on his blog)
In that same vein, Dave has also become a Gmail convert. Now…if I can just get him off of Blogspot and on to WordPress, my work here will be complete…
I found myself talking up Techrigy’s SM2 in two separate conversations — encouraging people to sign up for a freemium account to explore social media tracking, and plugging Connie Bensen as someone to ping on Twitter with questions.
I wound up talking about many of the people I met (in person or via social media) last fall when I moderated a panel on social media for nonprofits
We had a few chuckles about the <political> “Leaving Us in Great Pain” video </political> that I helped produce with some friends from Austin

I almost passed my notepad around asking people to put their Twitter usernames on it…but I decided against it. Feel free to add yours as a comment here whether you were in attendance or not if you’re interested in Columbus Web Analytics Wednesday. And/or, you can join our Facebook group. I was struck by the difference 10 months makes. We talked about Twitter during the first couple of WAWs last year, and the number of users were in the distinct minority. Some people had not even heard of it. Everyone I talked to last night uses Twitter, and uses it enthusiastically. The times they are a’ changin’!

* While quotation marks would ordinarily indicate that this was a direct quote, those in the title of this post more indicate paraphrasing of Monish Datta’s take on the evening. Actually…”paraphrasing” is an overstatement. In other words, I totally made the quote up. But, Monish was smiling and laughing, so I don’t feel too bad about it. I really just needed to get his name in the title for SEO chuckles.

Analytics Strategy

Columbus Web Analytics Wednesday — Jan 2009 Edition

Posted on January 16, 2009October 25, 2019 by Eric Peterson

The first Columbus Web Analytics Wednesday of the year is coming! As always, the meetup is open to anyone and everyone who is interested in web analytics — we just ask that you register so we have a sense of what our headcount will be.

We are heading back downtown this month, and back to our increasingly regular haunt: O’Shaughnessy’s. We will likely be upstairs, barring any SNAFUs. We are going to try something a little new on the format this month. In our normal presentation slot, we are going to go around the table and ask everyone to answer this question:

What web analytics report do you think has become the most irrelevant or overrated, and what report would you most want that you do not have?

We’re not going to require that participants all answer the questions, but hopefully enough people will that we can have a good discussion.

Wednesday, January 21, 2009 at 6:30 PM

O’Shaughnessy’s Public House

401 N Front St, Columbus OH

As always, thanks to our sponsors: Web Analytics Wednesday Global Sponsors and Lightbulb Interactive.

We’re close to having February’s WAW lined up as well, so stay tuned!

Analytics Strategy, Social Media

"You only get one chance to do it right. Try not to screw it up."

Posted on December 13, 2008October 25, 2019 by Eric Peterson

Thus were the words that subtitled Bryan Cristina’s presentation (PPT) on campaign tracking at the December Web Analytics Wednesday in Columbus last Wednesday, sponsored by CoreMetrics, Analytics Demystified, and SiteSpect at BJ’s Restaurant in Powell.

When it comes to screwing things up, we certainly had our opportunities:

Originally, we had planned on meeting at O’Shaughnessy’s Pub down in the Arena District. After initially being told we were good to meet there, we got bumped by a private party (apparently, a private party that has been occurring for a number of years at O’Shaughnessy’s and that takes over the entire place; it’s understandable, but still a bit irksome).
When we started looking for nearby alternatives, we realized the Rockettes were performing at Nationwide Arena that night, which was likely to clog alternate venues. So, BJ’s it was.
I forgot my camera. I was 3/4 of the way home to pick it up en route from work to BJ’s, when Twitter came to the rescue — @heatherdee409 shot me a tweet that she had a camera in her purse and we could use that. Thanks, Heather!
BJ’s had told us that we would have “the back room.” Unfortunately, that just described a large area, rather than any sort of private/semi-private space.

Thanks, I assume, to some more proactive promotion of the event (Dave Culbertson of Lightbulb Interactive accounted for at least half of the first-timers), we had record attendance. Combine the turnout with the fact that we were in a shared space, and we had less-than-ideal conditions for Bryan’s presentation. He brought a handout (PPT) and managed to semi-holler for a few minutes to quickly walk people through it. That was unfortunate, but I do think we are at least learning that we may have to settle for lesser quality food and a limited beer selection (read: The Spaghetti Warehouse) when we have a presentation.

Nevertheless, the presentation had some great information. And, some great lines that are typical Bryan-funny-caustic:

“‘We want to see what people from this campaign do on the site’ is not a goal, it’s an excuse for those who don’t know what they want to measure or for campaigns that have no purpose”
(When setting the campaign up) “Never trust anyone, especially yourself”
“Know the last possible second you can get things taken care of. People will forget you were excluded from everything until the last minute and will just blame you for being stupid.”
“‘It’s not in test, but it will show up in production’ means they have no idea what you’re talking about, don’t care, and none of your tracking tags will ever make it onto your campaigns.”

That’s just a sampling. Good stuff!

We had some first-time attendees I was pretty excited about:

Mark Whitman and Jen Wells of TeamBuilder Search — a relatively new recruiting company focussed on interactive talent; I had a good talk with Mark and got him to tentatively agree to do a presentation on building a career in the interactive space at a future WAW.
Noe Garcia of WebTrends — all the way from Portland! Bryan and I both go wayyyyyy back with Noe, and, interestingly, had had dinner with him earlier in the year at the same restaurant when he was in town; he’d been hoping that his travel schedule would line up with a Columbus WAW, and it finally did! Noe’s a great guy, and he’s tentatively agreed to have WebTrends sponsor a WAW in the spring and provide a speaker. Unfortunately, Noe was also partway through Super Crunchers, which I thought was a horrible book. We had a good-natured debate at the end of the evening about it and parted on speaking terms.
There were a few people I didn’t actually get to speak to, but who were new faces. And, embarrassingly, I had quite a conversation with a gentleman who has a local SEO/SEM firm…and I didn’t capture/record his name or his company! But, he did point me to Laura Thieme of OSU and bizresearch.com, who seems like another good contact for future WAWs.

List of tweeters in attendance who I could identify:

And, finally, I learned that there is apparently a Monish Datta fan page. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find it. So, I’m stuck just linking to Monish’s LinkedIn profile. But, hey, in the process of looking, I realized that last month’s post got me some serious Google Love on “Monish Datta” search results.

Analytics Strategy

And the Rebellion Is Over (for Now)

Posted on November 20, 2008October 25, 2019 by Eric Peterson

UPDATE: The venue for the event has changed. We got bumped from O’Shaugnessy’s by a private party and then realized that the Arena District would likely be overrun with people attending the Rockettes show that night. So, we’ve moved north to BJ’s Restaurant at 1414 Polaris Pkwy.

For almost a year*, Columbus Web Analytics Wednesday has been held on a Tuesday. Initially because that’s what seemed to work best, but, over time, simply because we enjoyed being rebels — bucking tradition, mixing things up. Nay! Walking on the wild side! It’s Ohio — that’s about the level of wild and craziness we reach.

But, alas! Of late, we’ve had some Tuesday conflicts cropping up. After conducting exhaustive market research**, we’ve decided to step in line and shift to Wednesday night. We’re not saying that’s a permanent shift, but that’s the case for December, at least.

Wednesday, December 10, 2008
6:30 PM until…it fades

O’Shaughnessy’s Public House
401 N Front St

BJ’s Restaurant
1414 Polaris Pkwy
Columbus, Ohio

For details and to RSVP so we’ve got a decent headcount, check out the Columbus WAW event page. The blogosphere is abuzz about it!

* 7 months, actually, but we’re trending towards a year, and web analytics is all about trends, right?

** A SurveyMonkey survey that had 13 respondents to date.

Analytics Strategy

Monish Datta Attends Another Web Analytics (Tuesday)

Posted on November 15, 2008October 25, 2019 by Eric Peterson

Ahhh…the timeliness of blogging. Not! The latest Web Analytics Wednesday in Columbus was last Tuesday, and I’m just now getting around to posting a brief recap. I’ve been battling a cold all week, which has combined with the mental rigors of starting a new job, and that’s just left me flat-out pooped in the evenings. That’s also my excuse for the lack of blogging overall, which I do hope to correct in the coming weeks, once I get my feet on the ground and figure out both topics and boundaries. So, be patient — no need to unsubscribe just yet!

Back to this month’s Columbus Web Analytics Wednesday. We headed back to O’Shaughnessy’s, and the event was again sponsored by CoreMetrics, Analytics Demystified, and SiteSpect. We had a good turnout:

We again teamed up with the Adobe User Group folk, which added some additional perspectives and some new faces. I, for one, had a great conversation about SaaS-based CRM software with a fellow whose company is in that market…but I managed to totally space on the company’s name, even though I asked him for it twice! (See note above about my cold and my new job.)

We now officially have three regulars with recurring conflicts on Tuesday nights. And, this was our second consecutive meeting with no formal speaker. These two factors spawned a discussion that led to a new survey that I did manage to get sent out on Thursday night. Even if you have never attended a Columbus WAW, but you’re interested, I’d appreciate two minutes of your time to get some basic information on your ‘druthers:

Click Here to take survey

Preliminary results are leading me to think we’ll try December’s event on a Wednesday, but I’ll get the data posted here once I’ve got a few more respondents.

That’s about all for this month. Monish Datta again pointed out that I’ve made little headway when it comes to moving up the SEO ladder on searches for his name, so I figured I’d try getting him in the URL and the <title> tag to see if that makes a difference. I’ll stop short of flat-out link baiting. I promise! This is just a recurring diversion that cropped up in our first or second meeting and is now likely destined to continue indefinitely!

Oh, yeah. And Dave Culbertson is now on Twitter…although he’s still using that horrid default avatar. And, he’s still wildly skeptical about the whole application!

Analytics Strategy

I Wonder If chacha.com Came Up at eMetrics?

Posted on October 22, 2008October 25, 2019 by Eric Peterson

We had a great Columbus Web Analytics Wednesday last night at The Spaghetti Warehouse, sponsored by CoreMetrics, Analytics Demystified, and SiteSpect. As usual, we held it on a Tuesday, and we went double-rebellious by somewhat inadvertently scheduling it to conflict with eMetrics (which lost us Jonghee and Judy) and with a local pool league (which lost us Nicole).

Nevertheless, we had a healthy turnout, albeit it one that had an exact 1:1 ratio of X to Y chromosomes (think about it):

As tends to be the case, we had heavy Coremetrics representation at the event, but we also had a WebTrends company, one company that’s exploring IndexTools, and heavy dabblers in Google Analytics all around.

We didn’t have any formal topic, but both ends of the table had some interesting discussions. On my end, a couple of the big topics were:

The importance of web analysts — or any working professional — being passionate about their work and constantly pushing themselves to try new things; this led to a discussion about the importance of “making mistakes” — it means that you’re trying new things, and it means that you’re learning. As theoretical as the summary sounds, this was rooted in experience with specific people in web analytics roles who were not effective in the position
The inaninty of the “clickpath” report — turns out that Bryan C. and I are both major anti-fans of classic clickstream reporting (it goes to my “people are cows myth”); single-level paths are much more practical and useful in most cases. We don’t like overlay reports, either, because they are so rife with pitfalls in their interpretation

We also covered a bit about my pending move to Nationwide, where I’ll be an official co-worker of Bryan C., albeit in a totally different department and not really involved with web analytics. More on that move to come — I expect the number of data management posts here to increase as I get more heavily back into that world.

And, on the “entertaining technology” front, Scott introduced us to chacha.com. It’s a free service where you can call or text in any question, and it will text back an answer. Scott demonstrated by calling and asking “Where do babies come from?” The answer that was returned was accurate, succinct, and, yet, would garner a PG rating on the big screen. I tried it this morning by asking “What is web analytics?” with lesser results:

Off-site web analytics refers to web measurement and analysis irrespective of whether you own or maintain a website.

I’m not sure where the “off-site” came in, but the response included a link with the question and answer: http://search.chacha.com/u/DIffZIPz. And, that link includes a link back to the “Source Website,” which was the Web Analytics Association, so, all in all, not bad for a one-minute response to a random question.

And, finally, Monish Datta said my goal should be for this site to show up as the number one Google result for a search on “Monish Datta.” Currently, I’m on the second page of results, lagging well behind the YouTube photo montage of The Monish set to the tune of Runaway. But, I’ll keep working on that.

Analytics Strategy

Columbus WAW — ExactTarget, CRM, Web Analytics, Google…Coupons/Chrome/Ad Manager, and More!

Posted on September 9, 2008October 25, 2019 by Eric Peterson

It’s another second Tuesday of the month, which means it’s another Web Analytics (Tuesday) in Columbus!

We had a good turnout — 13-14 people, including a good showing from the local Adobe User Group. ExactTarget graciously sponsored the event, and Brian Burson presented/led a discussion on integrating email, CRM, and web analytics. It was interesting, as he stressed that, while there is certainly a technology challenge in making that integration happen so that you can use web analytics and CRM data to improve the relevance of your communications to your prospects…an equally big challenge is setting up the heuristics (his $10 word — not mine!) to identify which people should get which messages and when based on that sea of data. It was great to hear a vendor acknowledge that it takes real thought and planning to pull that sort of thing off, rather than pretending that 99% of the battle is the integration of the systems! ExactTarget has a nice white paper on the subject on their site. Nice read.

Other random notes of interest from my end of the table:

Google Coupons — Pretty. Slick. Michael described the implementation as being very similar to using sitemap.xml implementation for improved searchability. Try out the end result yourself: 1) Go to Google Maps, 2) Type in your home or work address, 3) When it comes up, search for “Jiffy Lube”, 4) Underneath the results that show up, click Coupons. You’ll get printable Valpak coupons for the location. NIF-ty…
Google Chrome — the two things that, when prompted, I could say I liked about it: 1) the fact that multiple tabs spawned multiple processes, and 2) the fact that the search box and URL box were one and the same.
Google Chrome — it’s not a browser, it’s an application environment (that’ll be a topic for me to ask more about next month…as I’m not sure what that means)
Google Ad Manager — very favorable reviews from the people who have seen it and played around with it
“Social media” is becoming a dirty phrase among a noticeable portion of this crowd

Other, people-oriented news of note:

Monish Datta arrived and, as such, garnered a mention in this post to boost his Google-ability
Scott Zakrajsek attended and shared disparaging remarks about various people and vendors freely 🙂
Nicole…pulled another “mysterious and unannounced absence” from the event; we’ll tell her what we made up as excuses for her next time
Several of our regulars and semi-regulars had to bail at the last minute due to late-breaking conflicts. They were missed. I won’t “Highlight” anyone in particular that might “Tie” an aura of self-doubt to those folk that could only be properly analyzed by Carl “Jung. He” would have an interesting assessment, I’m sure.

Next month’s event should fall on October 14th, which means I’ll probably have to miss it (unless I make my trip to Austin that week rather abbreviated). We’ll get it up and running on the WAW site a bit sooner this time. We hope.

Analytics Strategy, Social Media

WAW(T) Columbus / Social Media Tools for Web Analysts

Posted on July 15, 2008October 25, 2019 by Eric Peterson

And…it’s the monthly installment of “Don’t These People Know that Wednesday Comes After Tuesday?” Also known as “Web Analytics Wednesday (on Tuesday) in Columbus.” This month’s event was graciously sponsored by Coremetrics.

We had a record turnout (um…by one), with participants from Victoria’s Secret, DSW, ECNext, ForeSee (all the way from Motor City!), Lightbulb Interactive, Highlights (current and former), Resource Interactive (current and soon-to-be former), Nationwide (former and soon-to-be-again), Franklin University, and, of course, Bulldog Solutions.

This month’s topic was “Social Media Tools for Web Analysts.” As usual, the presentation/handout was quick, and the more interesting part of the evening was the various side discussions that the discussion spawned. Several active Twitter users were in attendance: @bigbryc (who, apparently, I inadvertently “outed” as a Twitter user to some of his co-workers after last month’s WAW), @reubenyau, and @tgwilson (me).

The discussion centered around the various social media tools/sites that have web analyst-oriented activity. Presented from the perspective of…me, so by no means all-encompassing, and not really intended to be. We (mostly) steered clear of “social media measurement,” and we definitely steered clear of “leveraging social media as a marketing tool for your company.” The list of sites/tools and how/where I’ve seen them being used by the web analyst community is available in this Excel 2003 spreadsheet. I’ve tagged the sites/tools that, personally, I am a regular user of, as well as some of the sites/tools that I am likely to become a regular user of in the near future (or really ought to be a more regular user of) — print/print preview to see the two footnote indicators and what they mean.

It’s not comprehensive…and, yet, it’s longer than it really ought to be. I picked up a tip on Google Notebook, so I need to check that out.

I can’t figure out exactly how to work a couple of notes into this post, so I’ll just drop them in as non sequiturs:

Scott Zakrajsek was temporarily possessed by evil aliens recently. In reality, he always has and always will think that Coremetrics is the greatest web analytics tool on the planet
The soon-to-be-traditional Monish Datta direct reference so he can pop up on his friends’/co-workers’ Google Alerts…

As always, it was great to see the regular faces, great to see a few new faces, and we missed some of the regular faces.

Analytics Strategy, Social Media

Another Great Web Analytics Wednesday in Columbus

Posted on June 17, 2008October 25, 2019 by Eric Peterson

Tonight (Tuesday) was our fourth Web Analytics (Wednesday) in Columbus. We switched venues this month, and it looks like it’s going to stick — settling in at The Spaghetti Warehouse. Bryan Cristina’s concern was warranted — I don’t know that I’ve ever been to a restaurant that has beer on tap…but only two beers, and one of them really doesn’t count. But, I’ll deal with it. And I’ll make sure I’ve unzoomed the camera the next time I hand it to a waiter for a picture, so the flash is actually in range of the group!

We had attendees from far and wide. Judy Thaxton-Borlin from Brulant, who sponsored the evening (thanks!) headed down from Cleveland. And we had the entire Chicago office from Resource Interactive (that would be…Ty)! Unfortunately, our speaker fell through due to a scheduling mix-up — we were slated to have the Community Manager from Bazaarvoice, but settled for a couple of handouts from the recent Bazaarvoice Social Commerce Summit 2008. We had a good discussion about social media — where, when, and how ratings and feedback work on a site (Bazaarvoice’s specialty, and Nicole West of Bath & Body Works discussed how they’ve used the technology, as well as the challenges they’ve come across in mining the data and assessing the impact of the initiative). We had a conversation about Twitter — myself (@tgwilson) and Bryan Cristin (@bigbryc) being the biggest users in the group, although neither of us are diehard advocates. That led to the tale of #wa and Twitter.

A good time was had by all. We’re planning a multi-pronged assault on various WebTrends contacts (Noe…we’re gunning for you!!!) to get beyond the Coremetrics and Google Analytics-centricity of the group.

We’re on tap to have our next one on July 15th — another Tuesday, again at 6:30, again at Spaghetti Warehouse, with Coremetrics as the tentative sponsor. Details to come at the WAW site!

Analytics Strategy

Another Successful Web Analytics Wednesday in Columbus

Posted on May 20, 2008October 25, 2019 by Eric Peterson

I just got back from our third Web Analytics Wednesday — hosted on a Tuesday, because, doggonit, that’s just how we roll in Columbus. Deal with it!

We had a great guest speaker — Ken Barhoover from Brulant drove down from Cleveland and gave an excellent presentation on A/B and multivariate testing. Brulant uses Optimost for the most part, but they are tool-agnostic. The presentation covered both the basics of “why” on A/B testing, but Ken also went into some decent detail as to the logistics behind implementing A/B and multivariate tests. Very interesting stuff.

Finally, another Twitter user in the group — @johnboker attended!

And, thanks to Analytics Demystified for sponsoring the event!

Analytics Strategy, Social Media

Old School Online Community Leads to a Dozen Data Geeks and Drinks

Posted on March 14, 2008October 25, 2019 by Eric Peterson

I’ve been a fairly avid follower and contributor to the webanalytics Yahoo! group for several years now. It’s a Yahoo! group that is almost 4,500 members strong and includes active participation by many of the top minds in the web analytics industry. I actually follow the group via e-mail, which seems awfully old school. As a matter of fact, the WAA Community and Social Media committee (which I’m a new…and not very active member of — Marshall Sponder does a great job of running the committee, and I do feel bad that I don’t help out more!) is trying to figure out how to get the group onto a better platform. There’s a bit of “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” discussion on the subject, honestly. And unfortunately. The fact is that I doubt that a majority of those 4,500 people are really embracing social media just yet. And this online community is already awfully vibrant and successful on the current platform.

The Yahoo! group was originally formed by Eric Peterson. As that list grew (Eric passed it over to the WAA a few years ago), Eric got the idea to start up a convention of having a “Web Analytics Wednesday” on the second Wednesday of the month. This would be a designated date for web analytics professionals throughout the world to get together for a few drinks, to network, and to share ideas and challenges. Initially, the organization and coordination of these meet-ups happened directly through the Yahoo! group. But, Eric eventually put up a nice little application on his web site to facilitate these, and they’ve continued to grow.

Several months after moving from Austin to Columbus, I caught two posts in rapid succession on the webanalytics group that were clearly from people in Columbus. A couple of e-mails and a lunch meeting later, and we were hosting the inaugural Web Analytics Wednesday in Columbus! We actually held it on a Tuesday, as the venue we found promised to be less crowded then. We had a dozen people show up, it lasted for over 3 hours, and the overwhelming consensus was that it was worth doing again. Now, we just have to figure out how to structure it!

Unfortunately, one of the key organizers — David Culbertson of Lightbulb Interactive — wasn’t able to make it. But, he did manage to get a nice post up on his blog, including the picture that we took with Jonghee Jo’s camera.

I guess I’m getting old enough that I’m still amazed at the power of the internet to pull together a group of people with a very focussed area of interest. And to make the leap from online to in-person interactions so smoothly no less!