Tag: Web analytics

Analytics Strategy, General

Let The Wild Rumpus Start

Posted on by Eric Peterson

I feel liberated. For the first time in my professional career I don’t have to answer to anyone. Sure, I still carry accountability to my new partners Eric and Aurelie, to the Analytics Demystified brand that we will continue to grow and evolve together, and most importantly to myself to produce high caliber work. Yet, there isn’t anyone telling me what to do anymore. Not that I didn’t have autonomy in many of my previous roles…I did. But somehow working in an environment where I’m calling the shots – where the upside is big and the downside threatening – where I have an opportunity to make a difference that’s entirely my own creation – it is invigorating.

Making mischief of one kind and another…
So with this newfound freedom I plan to embark on initiatives and activities that weren’t previously available to me in former roles. And I will challenge the conventional measurement dogma along the way. I mentioned earlier that I intend to be an agent for change in Web analytics. To me that means: questioning the status quo of vendor measurement practices; challenging clients to fully develop their strategic vision for measurement; cultivating talent that instills measurement as a fundamental marketing discipline; and driving the industry to collectively embark on advancement. Simply forging ahead in using analytics and optimization technologies in the way we’ve done so during the past 5 years won’t get this industry to a better understanding of customer behavior and marketing intelligence.

Sailing off through night and day…And in and out of weeks…
Just for context, I’ll let you know that I did not arrive here overnight. I began my career 15 years ago as a marketer and realized that digital mediums could offer faster, better and more effective means of reaching customers. I watched the impact of my digital efforts blossom and realized that web technologies were the way of the future. I embarked on my analyst career back in 1999 by joining two former Forrester analysts at Gomez Advisors where I immersed myself in the online experience. There I learned what it meant to have a well founded digital strategy and consulted with firms on how to formulate one. As Gomez evolved to a performance management company, I continued my consulting and delved into the technical side of what it means to offer faster and more reliable online marketing. It was during this time that I realized that measurement was the basis for truly understanding marketing efforts. This led me to conduct analytics and optimization research at several analyst firms including: the Aberdeen Group, Jupiter Research and most recently Forrester. During my time at each of these companies, my quest remained the same: to help marketers understand how consumers receive, interact and respond to digital marketing – and what to do about it.

To where the wild things are…
That was how I became acquainted with Web Analytics and the industry figures that are indeed the wild things. I’ve commented before that the people of Web Analytics are among the most inviting and hospitable bunch I’ve ever met. I can recall my first conversation with Jim Sterne where I pitched him an idea for eMetrics and his response was “more please, my antenna are tingling…”. Practitioners like Judah Phillips and Jim Hassert were willing to get on the phone and articulate their analytics frustrations along with their successes to help me create research that would resonate with the marketplace. Consultants like Jim Novo and June Li spoke freely about their experiences in education and evangelism of Web Analytics that helped me formulate a perspective on why people cared so much about this industry. And vendors spoke about their technologies with passion and excitement. Every individual that I approached regarding Web Analytics was willing to share a story, some valuable insight or their unique perspective. It was clear that the people that worked within this industry had passion for what they did and I wanted to make myself an indispensable part of that community.

The most wild thing of all…
Among all the characters I met who were involved with Web Analytics one stood out apart from the rest. Eric Peterson seemed to personify Web Analytics. His enthusiasm for analytics and his capacity to evangelize measurement somehow captivated the veterans and newly indoctrinated alike. His passion for Web Analytics was emphatic and his communication tactics resonated. I did and still do appreciate that he takes a stand on his opinions regarding Web Analytics topics, but is still willing to give audience to differing views. He’s also willing to change his opinion if he’s proven wrong. While I’ve accused him of apologizing like Larry David, he will acquiesce when he’s wrong. Most importantly, Eric has made an indelible impact on the Web Analytics industry. Thus, when Eric and Aurelie approached me about joining them as a partner at Analytics Demystified, I couldn’t refuse.

It’s still hot…
So here I am, beginning a new chapter in my career that includes: education, evangelism and inciting change for Web Analytics. I’m here because I truly believe that this space is hot and it’s one that I want to be a part of for years to come. I relish the opportunity to work side by side with Eric and Aurelie because we’re all equally invested in this industry and each offer unique perspectives on where it’s all going. This means that we won’t necessarily agree on everything, but we do share a common view of the big picture. I hope to bring balance to the partnership and the chance to offer my perspective through thought leadership, guidance and evangelism. I’m also looking forward to sharing my experience, my learnings and my viewpoint with you. This industry wouldn’t be here if not for people to move it forward. I welcome conversations about how we can collectively advance measurement technologies and encourage you to reach out and share your views.

And now, let the wild rumpus start!

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Analysis, Analytics Strategy

Complex Processes and Analyses Therein

Posted on by Eric Peterson

Stéphane Hamel, it seems, is a bit peeved with Eric Peterson. These are two pretty big names in web analytics — Eric as one of the fathers of web analytics, and Stéphane as both a thought leader in the space as well as the creator of one of the most practical, useful web analytics supplemental tools out there — WASP: The Web Analytics Solution Profiler plugin for Firefox. With the plugin, you visit any site, and a sidebar will tell you what web analytics solutions it looks like it’s running. It’s pretty cool.

I don’t know the full background of the current back-and-forth between these two guys, but I’m a huge fan of Stéphane, and my ears perked up when I read this observation in the post:

Business Process Analysis implies understanding & improving a collection of interrelated tasks which solve a particular issue. Nothing new here… Most businesses face complex and “hard” processes, and the way to make them “easy” is by decomposing them into smaller sub-processes until they are manageable.

For one thing, for a period of ~8 months, my job title was “Director of Business Process Analytics.” And, frankly, I was never sure what that meant. In hindsight, if I’d had these two sentences from Stéphane and if I’d replaced “Analytics” with “Analysis,” I would have seen a much clearer mapping from my label to what I was actually doing in the role.

More important, though, is the concept of “decomposition.” I find myself preaching the Decomposition Doctrine regularly. And I believe in it strongly.

As an example, when it comes to the Holy Grail of Marketing Analysis — calculating the ROI of your marketing spend — many, many B2B marketers start out looking for the correlation between leads generated and revenue. I have yet to see a case in B2B where this can be found with a sufficiently tight, sustained correlation to be meaningful. That actually makes sense. It’s like looking for a correlation between the state someone is born in and the achievement of a PhD. There’s a lot going on over time between Point A and Point Z.

In the case of B2B marketing, decomposition makes sense. Decompose the process:

  • The lead-to-qualified lead sub-process
  • The qualified lead to sales accepted lead sub-process
  • The sales accepted lead to sales qualified lead sub-process
  • The sales qualified lead to close sub-process

Each of these sub-processes have people who proceed to the next sub-process as well as people who do not — put simplistically: people who “fall out of the funnel.” But, you can further decompose — of the people who fell out, where did they fall out and why? And does that mean they are gone forever, or are there processes/subprocesses that can be used to reengage them in the future?

The key here is that, from a theoretical perspective, if you link together all of the simpler sub-processes, then you’ve got an accurate representation of the more complex master process. The problem is that this is mostly true. There are probably other sub-processes that are unknown — those pesky “corner cases” that the real world insists on throwing at us. And, each sub-process likely experiences various anomalies over time. Add those together, and you’ve got a complex process that verges on the unanalyzable.

On the other hand, if you focus on a sub-process, you can analyze what is going on, including accounting for the anomalies. “But, isn’t there a risk that you’ll be missing the forest for the trees?” you ask. Absolutely. That’s why it’s important to start with a high-level view of the whole process, with a clear picture of the components that go into it. If you simply pick a “simple sub-process” to focus on, without understanding how and where that fits into the big picture, you run the risk of rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic. On the other hand, if you simply try to “analyze the Titanic,” without some level of decomposition, you’re equally doomed.

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