All of you who attended my American Marketing Association webcast titled “Web Analytics: A Day a Month” earlier this month, and any of you who missed it, who would like something you can share with others in your organization can now download a (mostly) free white paper on the same subject from Tableau Software. I say mostly free because you have to give some information, and I suspect that when you do, a sales-person may call.

You can request the paper from this URL:

http://www.tableausoftware.com/web_analytics_wp_peterson

Thanks a ton to the nice folks from Tableau for sponsoring the webcast and this short white paper.  If, after you download the document, you have any questions, I’m more than happy to hear from you either through my blog or directly via email.

If you’ve been doing more than just reading my blog, you probably noticed that I massively updated the Web Analytics Demystified web site over the past week. Thanks to Jeff, Judah, and dozens of other kind folk who gently pushed me to build a site that was more reflective of the work I’m doing now.

Aside from an overhaul for the look-and-feel of the site, here are some of the things you may want to check out:

• A substantial overhaul of the Web Analytics Wednesday site including the addition of new sections letting participants share their experience, information about how my company is now sponsoring events around the world, and better navigation tools for folks looking for local events.
• An overhaul of the jobs section of the site, including an updated RSS feed for jobs, job content integrated into site search, better navigation for jobs, and an overall cleaner look.
• The addition of new charting and trending tools to the Vendor Discovery Tool, which I’m really excited about since it makes it much easier to explore market relationships between vendors.
• A much cleaner process for purchasing copies of my books, as well as the ability to purchase copies of Web Site Measurement Hacks and standalone copies of the key performance indicator worksheets that come with The Big Book of Key Performance Indicators.
• An exciting new blog with Joseph Carrabis and (hopefully) a bunch of really bright people from inside the measurement community and out, The Future of Web Analytics, Demystified.
• RSS feeds for all major content areas of the site including research, consulting, jobs, Web Analytics Wednesday, and a universal feed for my, Judah, Daniel, and the all new Future of Web Analytics, Demystified blog.

There is a lot more but it’s probably better if you just come back to the site and have a look rather than my trying to describe it all.

If you find any bugs please don’t hesitate to shoot me an email and let me know. I very much welcome your feedback on the new site and am open to suggestions. I have a handful of initiatives that I’m still working on, including some stuff around Web Analytics Wednesday, but welcome your ideas.

I’m sure a lot of you got the email or saw the big announcement but the Omniture acquisition of Visual Sciences is complete.  Omniture has set up a customer welcome program at their site and has outlined a little bit about the transition plan and new product line (one word: complex)  Perhaps the funniest piece of information is this brag page about some of the business Omniture had taken away from WebSideStory or Visual Sciences, talking about the transition from HBX to SiteCatalyst.

Being a brand new Omniture customer (I license Visual Site), I just noticed that the company has Lance Armstrong and Seth Godin (who is rumored to dislike traveling West) speaking at their client event in March, wow!  In an odd way I’m quite bummed I won’t be able to attend the event since it would be a nice chance to see up close and personal what this new supercompany will look like.

Congrats to Josh James and the Omniture team, Aaron Bird on the promotion to General Manager of the VS business unit, and everyone at WebSideStory/Visual Sciences — hopefully you all find a nice and stable home at Omniture!

For those of you who missed my presentation yesterday, “Web Analytics: A Day a Month”, you can now listen to the re-recorded webcast at WebEx thanks to Tableau and the American Marketing Association. I say “re-recorded” since once again I managed to bring a large enough crowd to the webcast to break WebEx. Web analytics is hot!

You can listen to the webcast without having to register (still requires name and email) until next week I think by going to:

amaevents.webex.com

Here are a few other things I should mention, as long as I’m writing:

• I’m going to be in Boston next week for Judah’s Web Analytics Wednesday event (rescheduled from last month due to me being a weather-wimp) and if you’re in Boston or nearby I’d love to catch up. Please join us in Cambridge!
• The next few weeks I will be in Chicago (Jan 25th), Seattle (Jan 30th), San Jose (Jan 31st) and New York (Feb 7th) giving the keynote address at OpinionLab’s client conferences. The nice folks at OpinionLab mentioned that they’re opening up the events to non-customers so if you’d like to hear me talk about how quantitative and qualitative data combined provide a much more actionable view of the online visitor, please join us!
• The nice folks at the Direct Marketing Association who gave away PDF copies of my book Web Analytics Demystified in exchange for participation in their web analytics survey (written up by the amazing W. David Rhee) are holding a webinar on the research findings on Januay 23rd. The event is not free but the research is pretty good and if you’re in the DMA you should consider joining the call.
• The nice folks at the Web Analytics Association are also holding a research call, tomorrow (Jan 17th) in fact, on the future of the web analytics industry. I think this event is free but it might only be free to WAA members (maybe if Richard or Andrea read this they can comment for all to see!) The call is tomorrow morning at 9 AM Pacific, noon Eastern and you can register to attend at the WAA web site.
• Anil Batra has apparently jumped on the “bounce rate” bandwagon and is having a “bounce rate survey” that he’d like you to participate in. I haven’t had a chance to take it yet but I really enjoyed Anil’s salary research so I’m sure he’ll do a great job with bounce rate too!
• I’ll be back in San Diego in late February at Aaron Kahlow’s Online Marketing Summit talking about Key Performance Indicators in a Web 2.0 World.  I really enjoyed OMS last year and am looking forward to getting back to Sea World Aaron’s event!
• I had nothing to do with that movie on web analytics, despite it being filmed here in the Rose City, and have no idea what Ian is talking about.  Ian should spend less time at the movies and more time reading what experienced practitioners are saying about Gatineau.  <grin>

If I’m forgetting anything please comment below.  I think you’ll really like the webcast — the feedback I got has been excellent so far (despite some people going gossipy about the title of my last post on the subject … cage match indeed!)

When companies post jobs on the Web Analytics Demystified job board, and they reach out asking if I’ll blog the position, I always ask if they can tell me a story about how web analytics has positively impacted the organization. Sometimes the answers I get are pretty vague, but every once and awhile I get an answer that makes me go “yeah, that’s it!” This was the case when I talked to Richard Calentine at Scripps Network about an opening they have for a Director of Web Analytics in Knoxville, TN.

Scripps produces television and companion sites like HGTV.com, Foodnetwork.com, DIYnetwork.com, HGTVpro.com, among others. They’ve been using Omniture for several years and are on the cusp of rolling out new site technology that will further improve their reporting. Richard is a bright guy, well experienced in measurement, and the company is looking for someone to manage the entire web analytics group.

The company is doing some cutting edge stuff on the Internet and are very strong on tracking Flash, video, and other Web 2.0 technologies (they partnered with Omniture early on for ActionSource tracking and have published a case study on the subject listed on this page.) They’re working with my former co-worker Jodi McDermott at ClearSpring to put (and measure) widgets on the site and all in all it sounds like an excellent place to work.

But I wanted to tell you about how analytics has impacted Scripps. I asked Richard “what makes Scripps a great place to be a web analyst?” and he said, “Well, management is really pretty good about listening to employees.” He expanded on this by telling me that he did some analysis on the site for one of their popular TV shows. He was then asked to present the analysis to the president of HG Networks, who ended up taking the recommendations derived from the analysis of visitor behavior and making changes to the actual television program.

Richard says the opportunity for this kind of thing is increasing as the TV folks increasingly recognize the value of the Internet channel. Users telling companies about their likes and dislikes, voting with their click-stream, and the companies using that information to improve their whole business. Kinda brings a tear to my eye.

Knoxville is a great place, and Richard sounds exactly like the kind of person you want on your team as a Director in this position.

Check out the position at Scripps Network on the Web Analytics Demystified job site and apply today.