Eric Peterson's Blog at Web Analytics Demystified

Adam, John, and I are incredibly excited to announce that industry veteran Brian Hawkins is joining Web Analytics Demystified to help us expand our offerings around testing, optimization, and personalization of all forms of digital communication. Brian is the most widely recognized expert in the field when it comes to Enterprise-class optimization and personalization technology, integration, and strategy. He comes to us from Offermatica by way of Omniture and Adobe, and we are delighted to build on our support for Adobe’s solutions, adding Brian’s expertise on Test&Target to Adam’s SiteCatalyst-related offerings.

Brian’s offerings at Demystified will look a lot like Adam’s — audits of current implementations, strategic planning for testing and optimization readiness, systems integration architecture and support, and planning support for the entire end-to-end process of site and application optimization in the Enterprise. While Brian’s technology expertise is strongest on Test&Target, his knowledge of what it takes from a teams, governance, and process perspective to be successful transcends platforms and I believe will incredibly valuable to any large business trying to become agile in their optimization efforts.

Brian is taking a little time off before getting started mid-month but I will be adding his blog, a description of his offerings, and more about him to the site very soon. Clients are welcome to contact us directly to set up time to meet Brian (and if you’re not a client you can call too, that is if you have any interest in testing, optimization, or personalization.)

Brian will be with us at Emetrics, Adobe’s Summit in Salt Lake City, and of course he will be presenting at our own ACCELERATE event in Chicago on April 4th. If you’re at any of these events and would like to meet or connect with Brian, please drop me a note.

We hope you will join us in welcoming Brian to the team.

Posted Wednesday, February 1st, 2012 | No responses | Share, Save or Email

Continuing our long-standing efforts to support the broader digital measurement, analysis, and optimization community around the globe, I am incredibly happy to announce the creation of the Analysis Exchange Scholarship Fund. You can read the press release and learn more about the effort at the Analysis Exchange web site, but in an nutshell thanks to the generosity of ObservePoint and IQ Workforce we are now able to financially support Analysis Exchange member’s in their efforts to expand their web analytics horizons.

What’s more, as soon as Jim Sterne heard about our efforts, he and Matthew Finlay immediately donated three passes to the eMetrics Marketing Optimization Summit each year — how amazing is that! Tremendous thanks to Corry Prohens, Rob Seolas, Jim Sterne, and each of their teams for their support of our efforts at the Analysis Exchange.

Analysis Exchange members in good standing are encouraged to apply for scholarship funds. We are open to ideas but in general expect these funds to be used for things like:

• Pay partial travel or registration fees for conferences like ACCELERATE and eMetrics
• Pay annual membership fees for the Web Analytics Association or other professional groups
• Pay partial tuition to the University of British Columbia’s Web Analytics courses
• Pay partial costs for the Web Analytics Association’s certification
• Pay for books, software licenses, and so on

Quarterly awards will be up to $500 USD per selected applicant and I imagine we will give two or three away each quarter depending on the quality of applications we get. You need to be a member of Analysis Exchange in good standing and have earned very good scores on projects to be eligible.

I hope you’ll take a minute to learn more about the Analysis Exchange Scholarship. I also hope you’ve been helping in the Analysis Exchange and you’re excited to apply for this funding!

If you have any questions about these funds please don’t hesitate to reach out to our Executive Director Wendy Greco directly. I am also happy to answer questions.

Thanks

Posted Tuesday, January 24th, 2012 | No responses | Share, Save or Email

Just a quick note of thanks to OpinionLab, ObservePoint, and Splunk who have joined I.Q. Workforce as official sponsors of our global Web Analytics Wednesday series for 2012. Thanks to these very generous organizations, my partners and I are going to be able to continue to help Web Analytics Wednesday evolve and continue to be the gathering point for digital measurement practitioners and analysts around the globe.

What these added sponsors mean to all of you is bigger budgets for Web Analytics Wednesday which we hope will lead to bigger and better gatherings. Whereas we typically limited reimbursement from the Global Fund in the past to around $100 USD, we are now able to provide larger sums based on need and demonstrated commitment to the event.

More. Free. Money.

If you have any questions about hosting a Web Analytics Wednesday or how these funds can be used please email me directly. Otherwise I hope you will join me in thanking all four of these companies for their generous support of the entire digital measurement community.  You can tweet them at @corryprohens, @observepoint, @opinionlab, and @splunk or let them know you appreciate their efforts in the comments below.

Posted Tuesday, January 17th, 2012 | 2 responses | Share, Save or Email

Happy New Year everyone! I hope you had a relaxing and joyous Holiday season and are as excited as I am about what the coming year has in store. While I’m not much for making predictions I am a big fan of making resolutions, both personal and professional. Here are five high-level resolutions that Adam, John, and I have made for 2012:

We resolve to continue to provide great value to our clients.

A consulting business like ours is only as good as the value we provide on an ongoing basis. To that end, all of us are committed to working closely with all of our clients to ensure we deliver business insights and recommendations designed to make our key stakeholders look like heroes within their organizations. While we are intensely proud of the work our client Best Buy has done to become more analytically-minded, we want all of our clients to appreciate the same type of high-visibility wins.

We resolve to have Demystified to evolve with our industry.

You don’t need to be an analyst to see that the “web analytics” industry is changing. Increasingly the work our clients do is less about the “web” and more about the entire digital world, and the people, process, and technology required to analyze and optimize the digital world are different than those we have used in the past. We started thinking about this transformation back in 2009, but at Web Analytics Demystified we are committed to adding resources and knowledge to be the best guides possible as our clients begin to leverage digital business intelligence and data sciences.

We resolve to continue to provide great support to the measurement community.

Web Analytics Demystified is fortunate to be more than just a consultancy, we are part of the foundation of the entire digital measurement community around the world. Through our Web Analytics Wednesday event series, our Analysis Exchange educational efforts, our support for the Web Analytics Association, and now our ACCELERATE conference series we are able to connect with analysts around the world. In 2012 we resolve to do more for the community — watch our web site for news in the coming weeks about all of these efforts.

We resolve to provide more web analytics education in 2012 than ever before.

Our educational effort, Analysis Exchange, has succeeded beyond expectation since it’s inception in 2010, thanks largely to the efforts of Executive Director Wendy Greco. With nearly 1,700 members and nearly 200 completed projects, the Exchange has become the de facto source for hands-on web analytics education. But we believe we have found a way to do even more with the Exchange in 2012, creating more projects and opportunities for any individual motivated to break into this industry.

We resolve to make ACCELERATE the best small digital measurement conference in the world.

In 2011 we tried something new with the ACCELERATE conference. While mistakes were made, and an awful lot of nice people weren’t able to join us due to demand, we believe we are converging on an innovative conference format that will continue to be 100% free to attend. But we promise to not just stop when we find something that works — we are resolved to push ACCELERATE to be the most engaging, most fun, and most valuable small event in the industry.

How about you? What are you resolved to do in 2012?

Posted Monday, January 9th, 2012 | 2 responses | Share, Save or Email

I’ve been thinking a lot about some of the community events that my partners and I have had the opportunity to create over the years lately. While a lot of the focus recently has been on ACCELERATE — the web analytics industry’s first free conference series — our efforts more will turn back to Analysis Exchange and Web Analytics Wednesday as we roll into 2012.

I wanted to discuss the latter event.

Since co-founding the event with June Dershewitz in 2005, Web Analytics Wednesday has impacted web analytics practitioners, consultants, and vendors around the globe. Since January 1, 2009, over nearly 12,800 individuals around the globe have attended 524 different events … all free, almost all sponsored, and all designed to create local community value for web analytics professionals.

The best thing about Web Analytics Wednesday, at least in my opinion, is that nobody owns the event series! I get calls all the time from vendors asking about having an event in a city or on a date, and I have to admit I cannot really help them because we are only the brand steward for Web Analytics Wednesday, not the owners, and Web Analytics Wednesday ONLY HAPPENS because of the generosity and commitment of the broader web analytics community.

I think this is amazing.

Dozens of sponsors, hundreds of hosts, and thousands of participants, all coming together to make something happen. The list of hosts is too long to write out, but 99% of them are generous, selfless, and incredibly hard-working individuals who spent their free time organizing these events without any thought of compensation or recognition. When they could be with their families, they are working on behalf of the community. When they could be relaxing, they are organizing.

I think this is humbling.

Web Analytics Wednesday has become a nearly frictionless system, one that anyone, anywhere can help to make happen, and one that has helped people find jobs, find employees, find connections, and find new friends.

I think this is freaking awesome.

Sure, we have guidelines … we ask that hosts use our system for registration, we ask that events not charge money, and we ask that sponsors be treated fairly and appropriately at events, and we ask that when Global Funds are used that hosts take pictures for our Flickr Photo Group so that everyone can share in the fun. We expect Web Analytics Wednesday hosts to be cool, to be honest, and to do what they do for “the community.”

So few people have trouble with this model, the exceptions just become noise in the background.

What’s more, we have big plans for Web Analytics Wednesday in the coming year! Where markets have started to languish, Adam, John, and I have started stepping in and offering willing hosts help to reinvigorate their events. Where smaller events have started to grow, the Global Fund has been providing more and more money for reimbursement, and where we see synergies between our other efforts and those of associations and brands we respect and trust, we have been working to organize larger and more diverse events.

And we are just getting started.

If you’re new to Web Analytics Wednesday, here are the five most important things you should know about getting an event started in your town or community:

1. Web Analytics Wednesday is FREE and OPEN. By design, Web Analytics Wednesday events are open to all practitioners of web analytics and related disciplines and, thanks to the generous support of IQ Workforce and dozens of other companies, always free!
2. Web Analytics Wednesday belongs to everyone. We do not own Web Analytics Wednesday events, we are only shepherds of the brand, working to ensure consistency across a diverse global analytics community. Anyone willing to follow our very simple guidelines can establish a WAW chapter in their town.
3. Web Analytics Wednesday is what you make it. Because everyone owns Web Analytics Wednesday, the event is whatever the local community wants it to be. In some cities, WAW happens over lunch. In others, in nightclubs. Sometimes there are presentations, sometimes not.
4. Web Analytics Wednesday is a state of mind. These events are about local practitioners gathering together, not about a day of the week. Any day can be “Web Analytics Wednesday” … if you’re willing to put in the effort.
5. Web Analytics Wednesday is a profitless system. Again by design, and with specific intent, nobody makes money off of Web Analytics Wednesday. Regardless of who buys the drinks, nobody — including Web Analytics Demystified — makes a single, solitary penny off of these events.

This last point is important — if only because some people simply don’t seem to understand.

Every year generous sponsors like IQ Workforce, Coremetrics/IBM, SiteSpect, and dozens more agree to help pay for Web Analytics Wednesday events around the world. And every year my firm (Web Analytics Demystified) contributes hundreds of hours to ensure that these events go off smoothly. Tens of thousands of dollars are spent to entertain web analysts in great cities like Boston, Chicago, San Francisco, Hong Kong, Sydney, London, and hundreds more. But nobody working on these events — from the mightiest sponsor to the most humble host — gets any compensation in return.

Why do we do this? Why give our money and time to something that won’t make us money? Why did we bother to help create an event series that wouldn’t line out pockets and pay our hourly consulting rate? Simple …

Because we truly care about the web analytics community.

We created Web Analytics Wednesday with June Dershewitz because there was a need back in 2005. We created Web Analytics Wednesday because our community was growing in a strangely fragmented way. We created Web Analytics Wednesday because we could.

I sincerely hope that all of you who have sponsored, hosted, and participated in a Web Analytics Wednesday over the last seven years will continue to do so for years to come. At Web Analytics Demystified, our commitment is to what is right and just when it comes to this event series and, more importantly, to continue to help evolve and improve Web Analytics Wednesday to ensure that analysts everywhere are able to enjoy and appreciate the same community spirit that we enjoy every time we attend one of these events.

I welcome your comments.

Posted Saturday, December 10th, 2011 | 4 responses | Share, Save or Email