I am hugely excited to be able to announce the addition of Daniel Shields from CableOrganizer.com to the Web Analytics Demystified weblogs. Daniel works for Paul Holstein at Cable Organizer and is an exceptionally bright analytics practitioner, something he has demonstrated time-and-time again in the Web Analytics Forum.

Daniel joins Judah Phillips and I here in the Web Analytics Demystified weblogs. You can read Daniel’s introductory post and I encourage all of you to subscribe to Daniel’s feed today.

Welcome Daniel!

Blogger Avinash Kaushik kicked off a little debate in the blogosphere a few weeks when he declared:

“Engagement is not a metric that anyone understands and even when used it rarely drives the action / improvement on the website.

Why?

Because it is not really a metric, it is an excuse.”

Suffice to say, some pretty bright folks disagreed with Avinash, openly and vocally. Anil Jasra has a good summary of a panel from WebTrends Engage where Gary Angel, Andy Beal, Manoj Jasra, Jim Novo and Jim Sterne all apparently voiced their opinion that engagement is a metric, not an excuse.

Perhaps ironically, in an interview with Eric Enge from February of this year, Enge asked Kaushilk about my long series of posts on measuring engagement (emphasis mine)

Eric Enge: Another thing I read about recently was Eric Peterson’s notion of an engagement metric. Can you comment on that?

Avinash Kaushik: Sure. You know that Eric is obviously a leader in the industry. We are all following the trail that Eric has blazed. He is just an awesome guy and a really great thinker. And, in terms of the specific post that you are referring for engagement, I think Eric’s initial proposal for the methodology is a very good one, and it does extend the conversation in terms of what it is possible for us to measure, because Eric obviously has access to some pretty good tools that allow for deeper analysis. But my preference is to ask a random sampling of people, or every single person who comes to website, are you engaged, here is my definition of engagement, do you like this site or product, are you going to recommend it, or whatever is the case.

Now, to be fair, I agree with part of Avinash’s argument — qualitative data is a valuable input into measuring visitor engagement — I just don’t think qualitative data is the only input. Nor do I think that it is “nearly impossible to define engagement”. For over a year I have been calculating visitor engagement on my site using the following equation:

Looks complicated, huh? It is. But if you’re running a site like mine where the major outcome you’re trying to create is simply not measurable online, wouldn’t you like to have some reasonable proxy that would help you identify where your best leads are coming from, what those leads are looking at, and who your highest quality leads actually are?!

I know I do.

Obviously the equation above doesn’t tell you very much. If you want to hear the rest of the story, you have two options:

1. Come to my Web Analytics 2.0 presentation next Wednesday at 1:30 PM in the Blue Ballroom at Emetrics
2. Wait until next Thursday and download my updated Web Analytics 2.0 presentation from my web site

Ironically this little debate prompted me to stick the long-awaited explanation of how to measure and use visitor engagement into my Web Analytics 2.0 presentation. Thanks to Avinash for kicking off a nice (if a bit lopsided) debate!

See you in Washington!

I am, and man, the week before the big event I get excited.  I had a nice opportunity to chat with Matt Grant from Aquent about the event last week and Matt has posted the podcast of our conversation.  Aside from that, I’m looking forward to seeing some of the brightest folks in the industry present, hearing from the vendors, and spending more time getting to know lots of the great folks I’ve had the chance to talk to in the last six months.

If you’re coming to D.C. and you’d like to meet in person, please feel free to contact me this week so we can set up a time to talk.

I ran into Dennis Bradley from Charles Schwab at the SEMphonic X Change in my web analytics process huddle and he asked if I would write a post about their job opening for a Senior Manager for web analytics in their San Francisco offices. You can have a look at the complete job description here but I talked to Dennis for awhile about what they are looking for.

According to Dennis, Schwab is doing pretty well with measurement but is looking for an experienced veteran to help them take web analytics to the next level. We talked pretty extensively about their need to build out processes around doing web analytics across the organization, essentially institutionalizing their use of web data. Schwab is gathering data from a variety of sources — click-stream, VOC (using online survey tools), etc. — but is starting to think about multivariate testing, behavioral targeting, email integration, and the such. Dennis basically needs someone for his team that can push the company deeper into web analytics, basically taking them from “Web Analytics 1.0″ to “Web Analytics 2.0″ (link goes to my presentation on the subject of Web Analytics 2.0.)

This position isn’t just about web analytics, however. The right candidate will get to work with diverse groups within the organization including finance, database marketing, and the client satisfaction team. Dennis says this position will have good exposure across the organization which is great if you’ve been doing web analytics for 3 to 5 years and are looking for an opportunity to expand your knowledge of the Financial Services sector. In my experience, a ton of really interesting analytics projects are happening at companies just like Schwab so this would be a great opportunity IMHO.

Did I mention that Schwab is a SEMphonic client and the hire would also get to work with Gary Angel and his talented crew? Yep, and this is a real advantage for anyone taking the position since there will be a built-in support team that already has a great body of knowledge about what has been done and what might be good to do next.

Posted salary is very competitive, even for San Francisco. I would venture that the right person will be very successful for many years working with/for Dennis.

Check out the Senior Manager of Web Analytics opening at Charles Schwab now!

Gary Angel and the folks at SEMphonic have just launched five more must read web analytics blogs. Check out Gary’s post and subscribe to new web analytics blogs from great people like Joel Hadary, Paul Legutko, Phil Kemelor, June Dershewitz and Jesse Gross. While it’s no secret I am a huge fan of June Dershewitz, I’m very excited after the recent X Change conference to read Joel, Paul, Phil, and Jesse’s work as well.

Props to Gary for getting this uniquely talented crew to share their ideas and experiences. Even if he did call me a monolith, I still appreciate what Gary and Joel are trying to do for the entire web analytics community.