About a month ago, just before I started Web Analytics Demystified, I had the pleasure of sitting down for an interview with Jeremiah Owyang of PodTech.net. Clint first introduced me to Jeremiah when I was talking about measuring visitor engagement and how social media might be best measured. Jeremiah is very much connected in the Bay Area and I though the interview went really well (but you can judge for yourself by watching the interview at Jeremiah’s web site.)

A number of folks have commented on the interview at Jeremiah’s site and the comments are well worth a read.

More recently I wrote a post on the 10/20/70 Rule for Achievable Web Analytics Success in which I outlined the importance of process to web analytics. A number of folks have since commented on the post but Rene Dechamps from OX2 was kind enough to post a video from the conversation that got me thinking about 10/20/70 (thanks Rene!)

Since Rene was about as tired as I was at 7:00 AM local time, and he’d been kind enough to bring me a coffee, I recommend ** not ** trying to watch the video and just listening instead.

What do you think?  Should I stick to writing and stay off the tele?  As always, I welcome your comments.

I just happened to write my contact at comScore today asking about their follow-up report on cookie deletion.  He said it would be out today and here it is:

http://www.comscore.com/request/cookie_deletion.asp

This report does a good job of providing additional data and information about the comScore methodology in this report, something missing from the press release and critical to our collective understanding of cookie deletion.  This report explicitly addresses anti-spyware and the differences in third- and first-party cookie deletion, essentially showing that there is an anti-spyware effect but it is minimal compared to manual cookie deletion which appears to be the primary culprit.

comScore also presents some of the attitudinal data they alluded to in their press release, essentially confirming what I first reported at JupiterResearch in 2005 … that most consumers aren’t really sure what cookies do.

Since I last saw the report they added a few sections — one on international traffic and one on cookie blocking.  While the section on international doesn’t add much to the conversation other than to explain why panel-based and log-based systems numbers differ (something that should be fairly obvious), the cookie blocking data is pretty interesting.

According to comScore, if your web analytics application falls-back to an IP-based value for unique visitor identification in the absence of a cookie being successfully set, you’re likely worse off than you are simply dropping those visitors.  Their table on page 15 shows that due to dynamic IP assignment that the average home computer has 10.5 different IP addresses in a month.  Yikes!

If you’re into this stuff, or if you’re interested in how much cookie deletion might be impacting your own audience measurement, you should download the report and give it a careful read.  It certainly doesn’t provide a solution to the problem, but often times knowing is half the battle.

http://www.comscore.com/request/cookie_deletion.asp

I welcome your feedback on the report and the usual comments and criticism.

The overview document I promised when we conducted our survey in March and April is finally available and can be downloaded here:

http://www.webanalyticsdemystified.com/research/

You can read the press release that was written about the research here:

http://new.marketwire.com/2.0/rel.jsp?id=739164

There is also a very nice write-up on the research written by Jennifer LeClaire called “Process-Driven Analytics or Bust” published on the NewsFactor Network. In the article Jennifer explores the data and captures good insights from both Megan Burns at Forrester and John Lovett at Aberdeen.

From Megan Burns:

Web analytics is so complex, Burns added, and there is so much analysis that organizations could do. Day-to-day reports need to be institutionalized, she explained, by putting in systems and processes that function smoothly.

“With a process-driven approach, your Web analytics analysts have the time to do higher level activities, advanced analysis, support multivariate testing, and other activities that deliver additional incremental value to an organization,” Burns said.

From John Lovett at Aberdeen:

“The next level [in web analytics] is establishing business processes so you can use analytics to measure results,” said Aberdeen’s Lovett. “That is the best way for companies to leverage the analytics platform.”

Thanks to Zori Bayriamova (my research partner), the Web Analytics Association (our research distribution partner) and over 1,000 people around the world who responded to our request for help with this report. We will be publishing follow-up reports over the next few months so definitely keep in touch.

Again, you can download this research at:

http://www.webanalyticsdemystified.com/research/

In San Francisco during the “Guru Breakfast” event Rene Dechamps asked a question about the importance of process to web analytics. This is clearly something I believe to be tremendously important (quit my job, printed business cards, etc.) and Bryan Eisenberg commented that “web analytics was 10 percent technology, 20 percent people, and 70 percent process …”

Rene said he would post the video he took of this conversation soon, but suffice to say Avinash Kaushik, Jim Sterne and I all agreed with Bryan. Process is very important to web analytics, but the importance of process is often overlooked.

Recently a reporter got me thinking about these numbers, so I would like to formally propose an update to beloved guru Kaushik’s widely quoted 10/90 rule. I call it the 10/20/70 Rule for Achievable Web Analytics Success. Here is what it says …

• Our Goal: Highest value from our investment in web analytics
• Percent of time and effort spent on the selection and deployment of their technology platform: 10%
• Percent of time and effort spent on the hiring and allocation of really smart people: 20%
• Percent of time and effort spent on the process of actually “doing” web analytics, leveraging both technology and people: 70%
• Bottom line for Achievable Success: It’s the process

The explicit recognition of the value of process resolves some of the issues people have with Kaushik’s original proposal, two of which include:

1. It is very difficult to spend $90 of every $100 on “intelligent resources/analysts” given the extreme dearth of available talent relative to the number of jobs currently open in the market today. Even Kaushik’s former organization (Intuit) is, to the best of my knowledge still looking for his replacement, several months later, ironically highlighting the difficulty of finding good talent.
2. Unless you’re gonna go the Google Analytics route (spending $0 on technology) and hire inexpensive resources to install the software (likely not one of the GAAC partners, although I’m not entirely sure what they charge) you’ll be hard pressed to spend $10 of every $100 on software license and implementation.

Now, I obviously agree with Avinash’s emphatic call to hire smart people. I’m a huge fan of dedicating resources to web analytics projects and have been since 2004 when JupiterResearch published my report Web Analytics: Spending, Staffing, and Vendor Selection. You need bright people to run your web analytics applications and to analyze data (although you may not need the people you think you need … more on that in another post at another time!)

But I think that the right way to frame the right approach to web analytics is not in terms of how you spend your valuable money, it’s how you spend your valuable time. So the 10/20/70 rule updates Kaushik’s rule by applying the appropriate emphasis squarely on the processes involved in “doing” web analytics.

Remember, you can always make more money, but it’s hard to make more time. Fortunately, some pretty bright people seem to agree with me.

Consider this: The technology involved is largely the same, especially at the level of need that most companies currently have from their web analytics solution. And while people are a good proxy for true process, in my experience too great of a dependence on people can cause two substantial problems:

1. If the people are not the right people, the organization may not realize there is a problem until a great deal of money has been spent and a great deal of time has been wasted
2. In my recent web analytics survey (results coming very soon!) we found that HALF of all respondents having web analytics experience had considered taking a new job in the last six months

So in the absence of process, some companies end up hiring unqualified people, hiring the wrong people, or hiring people who jump ship when the next best offer comes along. Certainly this is not the case with all companies, but until your organization has clear expectations about the goals for your investment in web analytics and how you plan to achieve those goals, technology and people will only get you so far.

I know, I know, I said to hire people and everything would be fine. It will be fine, but with process, you can be better than fine. You can make money. Piles of it.

So if you think your company is not following the 10/20/70 rule, here is my humble recommendation for you to consider:

1. Take whatever technology you have already deployed, until you’re good at web analytics the technology doesn’t really matter
2. Gather your key site stakeholders together
3. Ask them to share their experience and understanding of web analytics thus far
4. Document the gaps, looking for statements like “concerns about data accuracy”, “problems with data collection”, “not getting the right reports”, “reports are not actionable” and “concerns about how effectively we’re using web analytics tools”
5. Pick any typical site process such as launching a new campaign or deploying a new page or micro-site
6. Diagram the process you picked in step #5, highlighting decision points, tasks, and sub-tasks
7. Determine where measurement fits in the diagram you produce
8. Ask yourself if measurement, reporting, and/or analysis always happens in the places you’ve identified
9. If not, ask yourself if the lack of measurement, reporting, and/or analysis results in the stakeholder concerns discovered in step #4
10. If so, add measurement, reporting, and analysis to your diagram and make sure to follow the new diagram/process/checklist every time!

Still on the fence? Here are some questions for you to consider:

1. If you have spent $10 of every $100 on technology, are you successful in getting most of your questions answered?
2. If you answered “yes” to question #1, are you sure you’re asking the right questions?
3. If you’re trying to spend $90 of every $100 on people, how exactly is that going for you?
4. If you answered “great” to question #3, are you sure you’re not paying too much?
5. If you have great technology and great people, what is your web analytics ROI?
6. If you don’t know the answer to question #5, why not?
7. If you have dedicated analysts on your staff, what percentage of their time do they spend generating reports and attending meetings vs. producing analysis and managing experiments?
8. If you answered “too much reporting and meetings” to question #7, why do you think that is?
9. If you have thought about the process of doing web analytics, do you have a checklist or business process diagram for the core processes?
10. If you answered “huh?!” to question #9, call me.

Obviously my clear bias is for companies to invest in the process of doing web analytics. But professionally I have spent a great deal of time looking at this problem from all possible angles. And every time the answer is the same: The companies that invest their time refining how they actually “do” web analytics get more out of their efforts than companies who simply invest their money.

As always I welcome your comments and criticism.

On Thursday of last week I had the great pleasure of traveling to Holland to give a keynote presentation at the first Webanalytics Congres in Zeist. By all measures the event was a great success:

• Roughly 180 people attended this first time event (congratulations to BBP!)
• (Reportedly) very good presentations, including one from Postbank.NL that was very well received and is reviewed by my friend Aurelie Pols. I say “reportedly” very good since I understand very little Dutch and the conference is, well, almost entirely in Dutch
• The vendors at the event reported good conversations and good traffic for a crowd this size

I presented research from my recent web analytics survey looking at the differences in attitude and opinions regarding web analytics use in Europe and in the U.S. While survey data can sometimes be quite dry, the information I presented elicited several very good questions, the best of which was “Can you please give me a list of good analysis questions that web analytics can answer?”

I also had the chance to meet in person some tremendously nice people including Marco Derksen of Marketingfact.NL and Upstream.NL, Neil Morgan from Omniture, Dennis Mortensen from Indextools, Bram van Essen from Paul Postma Marketing Consultancy, Eelco van Kuik from the Conversion Company, Nicole Niemann from Satama, Geert-Jan Smits from Jungle Rating. In fact, Geert-Jan Smits signed a copy of his new book on Balanced Scorecards, De Internet Scorecard, which is entirely in Dutch but that Aurelie assures me is very good.

You can download a PDF of my presentation here.

On Friday night, Web Analytics Demystified and OX2 sponsored a little dinner in Amsterdam which was also very much a success. A number of companies participated and I believe a very good time was had by all.

I want to personally thank Rene, Aurelie, Marco, Paul, Heidi, and everyone else who made this trip (and my little holiday) possible. I am very much looking forward to my return to Europe in September for e.Day and other web analytics events currently in planning (yes Lars, I’m coming to Scandanavia!)

Here are some photos:

Steven Krall from Leads2Business, Rene, Dennis Mortensen from IndexTools, Aurelie in Zeist, Holland.

Heidi Bouhuijzen from BBP. Heidi made this trip an absolute dream by coordinating every aspect of my travel. If you’re coming to Europe, I hope you’re lucky enough to have someone as wonderful as Heidi to help you!

Marco Derksen from Marketingfacts.NL. Marco was the driving force behind bringing me to the Webanalytics Congres and has the most popular marketing blog in the Netherlands.

The two Renes, Dechamps and Nijhuis. The latter Rene is from Google Analytics in Amsterdam and works for my friend Dr. Brian Clifton.