Archive for March, 2010

Those of you in the Web Analytics Association are likely aware that the voting for the 2010 – 2012 Directorships starts sometime today. My understanding is that ballots will arrive in the mail and each active member will be able to vote for up to five nominees.

While I have never seriously considered running for the WAA I do pay special attention to the board’s make-up, primarily because the Board of Directors is the shepherd of the Web Analytics Forum at Yahoo Groups that I founded in 2004 and “donated” to the Association back in 2006, and because I have a standing partnership with the Association around the Web Analytics Wednesday social network that I founded with Board member June Dershewitz back in 2005.

This year there are some really amazing people running for election and there are a lot of them. Because the field is crowded I wanted to take a few minutes to call your attention to three in particular who all have the type of long-standing investment in the web analytics community, passion, and experience required to succeed on the Web Analytics Association Board of Directors. If elected, I am confident that John, June, and Steve will push the WAA to provide more value, show more leadership, and create more opportunities for the larger web analytics community across the globe.

• John Lovett: Obviously I plan to vote for my business partner John Lovett, despite the fact that I tried repeatedly to talk him out of running! John is a long-time member of the web analytics community and has an incredible depth and breadth of knowledge about the industry. More than anything John gets my vote because he has demonstrated time and time again the ability to build consensus around difficult ideas despite the presence of hot-headed contributors (yes, I do mean me.) This combined with his bold statement “My efforts will be focused to stop making excuses and start delivering value …” resonates clearly with me as it should any member who has ever struggled to justify the cost of membership or time spent volunteering. I believe that a vote for John Lovett is a vote for accountability with the WAA Board.
• June Dershewitz: June has been a friend for an awfully long time and is someone I have grown to trust, respect, and listen to (which I am not particularly good at on some matters.) June and I worked out the partnership between the WAA and Web Analytics Demystified’s Web Analytics Wednesday social network to provide the WAA access to our global network of web analytics practitioners, all of whom are potential members of the WAA, and despite small-minded opposition from within the current board June continues to champion for this relationship as it clearly delivers value to the WAA member rolls. I believe that a vote for June Dershewitz is a vote to make the WAA more inclusive, not more exclusive.
• Steve Jackson: Steve, as anyone who has ever met him knows, is delightful to work with and a brilliant analytics practitioner and consultant. More importantly, Steve is one of a very small number of web analytics bloggers willing to address difficult and uncomfortable subjects head-on honestly, objectively, and with a passion that is sometimes rare out there. Hell, anyone willing to run for WAA Board after publicly stating “I don’t think that the current membership fee is worth the money …” deserves to be elected just so he can put his money where is mouth is. I believe a vote for Steve Jackson is a vote to change the way the WAA provides value to it’s members around the globe.

Obviously there are an awful lot of other good people running including Jodi, Dennis, Jim, Eric, Lee, Alex, Sean, and more I’m surely forgetting right now! Hopefully those of you in the WAA will spend some time this week taking a look at all of the nominees and thinking about your own relationship with the Association and how these “elected officials” influence what the Web Analytics Association will ultimately become for you.

Best of luck to everyone running and DON’T FORGET TO VOTE!

When I first saw the news of Google’s opt-out browser plug-in spread around Twitter I thought “hmm, I wondered when we’d see this” and moved on since opt-out is more or less an non-issue — basically because in the grand scheme of things nobody really opts-out. For all the hand-wringing and navel-gazing people do on the subject of privacy online, I have never, ever seen any data that indicates that web users actively opt-out of tracking in significant numbers.

Never.

If you have it, bring it on as I’d love to see it. But in my experience the only people really truly and actively interested in browser- or URL-based opt-out for tracking are privacy wonks, extreme bit-heads, and some Europeans. The privacy wonks and bit-heads are who they are and are unlikely to ever change; the Europeans have privacy concerns for other reasons but I will defer to Aurelie to try and make heads or tails of what those reasons are.

Still, it has been interesting to see some bright folks like Forrester’s Joe Stanhope offer some explanations about why Google might be doing this and what the ramifications might be. And it has been less interesting to see some of the fear mongering and hyperbole offered by Marketing Pilgrim’s Andy Beal in his post “Why your web traffic is going to nosedive thanks to Google” although I found Econsultancy balances things out with their straightforward and tactful post “Will opt-out threaten Google Analytics?”

What Andy, Patricio, and to some extent Joe, apparently didn’t notice is that Google Analytics is about to make a big, big push into Federal Government web sites, and this browser-based opt-out is just a check-box requirement to satisfy the needs of said privacy wonks who for better or worse have the Administration’s ear (or some body part, you choose!)

Yep, the browser opt-out isn’t actually for anyone … except for perhaps the Electronic Freedom (sic) Foundation and their ilk. Google is somewhat brilliantly checking a box now so that when the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) releases all new Federal guidelines for browser cookie usage later this year any Federal site operator who wants can immediately dump their existing solution and go directly to Google Analytics.

You do remember that Google Analytics comes at the amazing deficit reducing price of ABSOLUTELY FREE. Even a Republican can get his or her arms around that price tag, huh?

You betcha.

“Hey wait,” you say, “what about the fact that Federal web sites will probably never get permission to track visitors over multiple sessions?” Good point, except did you know you can override Google Analytics _setVisitorCookieTimeout() and_setCampaignCookieTimeout() variables and set their values to zero (“0″) which effectively converts all Google Analytics tracking cookies to session-only cookies?

Yep.

Not to mention that the little birds who sing songs in only hushed tones suggest that OMB is about to take a much more reasonable stance on visitor tracking anyway. This is not a done deal, but the situation that most Federal site managers work under today — one where many sites are more or less forced to use out-of-date log file analyzers and most are hamstrung in their ability to analyze multi-session behavior — seems to fly directly in the face of President Obama’s efforts to make government more transparent and effective.

I said as much just after he was elected, and then I said it again when I pointed out that Barack Obama should not fear browser cookies! Federal managers need modern, easy-to-use tools to improve the overall quality of government web sites.

Now, I could be wrong about all of this — I am human, and like Joe Stanhope I have not heard word-one from Google about the opt-out app — but I am pretty good at connecting dots and these are big, obvious dots:

1. Google loves data
2. Feds have tons of data
3. Feds have requirements necessitating privacy controls
4. Google builds privacy controls
5. Google gets Feds data

This is actually pretty brilliant of Google if you think about it. Assuming you’re with me in my belief that Google Analytics isn’t about AdWords or Analytics or anything other than Google’s desire to have all the world’s data, then you’ll surely see that providing Federal web site operators a web analytics solution that simultaneously solves a multitude of analysis problems AND saves money is, well, pretty freaking brilliant.

Don’t take my word for it. Here’s a list of sites in the .gov domain that people are tracking using our free, browser agnostic web analytics solution discovery tool. We have about 100 sites total, the majority of which don’t appear to have any kind of tracking code at all, and of these:

• 12% are using Google Analytics exclusively already
• Another 3% are using Google Analytics with Omniture (1%) or Webtrends (2%)
• 6% are using Omniture (one, GSA.gov in tandem with Webtrends)
• 15% are using Webtrends (including GSA.gov in tandem with Omniture)
• 63% appear to have no hosted analytics of any kind

If I’m right the evidence will be obvious as more of these “no hosted analytics” sites begin to have Google Analytics tags. Sites like Census.gov, the EPA, FCC, FEMA, HUD, and even FTC might all start to take advantage of Google’s largesse (and willingness to provide a browser-based opt-out, don’t forget that!)

What do you think?

As always I welcome your thoughts, observations, reaction, and even anti-tracking-pro-privacy rants. If you are you a Federal site manager with insight to share but unable to voice your position publicly then out of respect I am happy to have you post anonymously as long as you provide a valid email address that I will confirm and then convert to “anon@anonymous.gov” to protect your identity.

You know how sometimes in life a plan looks good on paper but when you put it into action things don’t work out? That happens to me sometimes … but I gotta say that is not happening with The Analysis Exchange! Our Alpha testers are starting to complete their projects and I am so excited I wanted to share the feedback I got this morning from our mentor + student + organization trio.

First, from the mentor:

“My student presented her initial findings today to the organizational partner and our project lead was THRILLED. She loved the initial findings and asked if we could present the final deliverable to her CMO! I couldn’t have asked for a better outcome of the first alpha project. The student discovered some very compelling findings and she’s getting access to the c-level to showcase her analysis skills and discoveries. It will likely guide the way that they develop for their mobile users.

Congratulations! I’m so looking forward to helping you build a high impact final presentation and hearing you deliver.”

The student responded with this:

“I can’t tell you what a great feeling it is to have someone genuinely get excited about my findings and recommendations, especially on my very first project since finishing the UBC program. The reassurance that what I learned in school is transferable to the real world is invaluable.

My mentor was a great mentor and teacher, taking the extra time to educate me on Google Analytics, what data to focus on and where to find it. I am excited about the presentation we will present to our client. This Analysis Exchange experience has been extremely rewarding and educational. I feel that students will get the experience they need to enter the analytics world and be an effective and relevant contributor. I am looking forward to my next project!”

(You can perhaps imagine that I personally am floating on cloud nine at this point!)  The organizational lead wrote in and said:

“I am just so excited about the things our student discovered. I can’t wait to share it with my team here, and see if there’s anything, no matter how small, we can do to improve the site. Doing this kind of analysis was something I just never had the time for, and I knew that it was important to find out more about our mobile audiences. The student is going to prepare a brief presentation that she is going to share with the team here, hopefully next week. I’m really looking forward to seeing all the data!

Thank you for giving us the opportunity to participate in this project. It has been a very valuable use of time for me, and hopefully for the mentor and student as well.”

Will someone pinch me please!! We have two more Alpha projects due to complete this week and, assuming I’m able to get their feedback coded into the site, we should be ready to launch into a more widespread BETA effort staring right around April 1st.

Thanks to everyone who is signing up and helping to spread the word about The Analysis Exchange. Keep up the great work!

If you are one of the thousands of people who have attended one of our Web Analytics Wednesday events over the past few years, well, thank you! Thank you for showing your support of the web analytics community, your local community, and the practice of web analytics in general. I had no idea that our execution of June’s idea would progress to near the point it has … touching so many people and providing a gateway to jobs, employees, and all kinds of new ideas.

That said, two challenges have emerged recently and I felt like a quick blog post that everyone could reference would be the best way to deal with each. In no particular order:

1. Web Analytics Wednesdays are designed to be a free event. It has come to my attention that some local chapters of WAW are charging people to attend events. In most (probably all actually) cases these fees are designed to offset the cost of food or drinks, but here’s the thing: we have tons of money for Web Analytics Wednesday and we can almost certainly get more if we need it! If you find yourself in the position of having to ask local members for $10 for an event … please please please email me directly and lets find you money! I am pretty creative, and the 2010 Global Sponsors have already donated very generously, so let me help you make a totally free event if at all possible, please!
2. Web Analytics Wednesdays need to be run thoughtfully when held in conjunction with Web Analytics Association events. This gets back to  the open-to-all atmosphere of Web Analytics Wednesday, but it has been brought to our attention that some WAA country hosts in Europe have been holding joint WAA + WAW events. This is excellent and wonderful, except if it happens at the expense of A) the global agreement between the WAA and Web Analytics Wednesday and B) the ability for anyone — WAA or not — to participate.

The second point merits additional explanation. Web Analytics Wednesday, as many of you are already aware, is an independent entity created by Web Analytics Demystified, not the Web Analytics Association. Because it is a “community event” many people mistakenly assume it is WAA but it is not and never has been. We maintain WAW as a private entity because A) we believe it needs to remain open to all, not just those folks able to justify and afford the Association’s $199 annual fees and B) honestly, it’s a lot easier to get financial support for these events as an independent entity.

To clarify this, a few years back June and I hammered out an agreement between the Association and WAW. Without boring you with the details, the agreement specifies that “Web Analytics Wednesday” is an independent brand, that all WAW registrations will occur on our web site and system, and that WAW will be open to all comers, not just WAA members. It’s an awesome agreement because it allows the Association access to WAW events around the globe without needing to have any infrastructure.

The agreement also totally, totally supports local WAA events that want to have a social function as well! If a WAA coordinator or country manager wants to have a “social event” after a sanctioned WAA event that requires registration they have two very simple options:

1. Call the event Web Analytics Wednesday, create the event on our platform, advertise the event for anyone and everyone who wants to attend, and ask people to sign up to participate at the official WAW web site;
2. Call the event anything other than “Web Analytics Wednesday”

Easy, huh?

All we are seeking to do is ensure that “Web Analytics Wednesday” continues to be known as a totally free event, open to all comers regardless of financial disposition and willingness to support any association, vendor, or technology. And to that end we are working as hard as possible to provide resources — financial and otherwise — to event planners across the globe, working with great organizations like the WAA, and working with the brilliant and wonderful WAW hosts who have made Web Analytics Wednesday the amazing event it is.

Personally I’m looking forward to getting to know the new WAA Executive Director and working to ensure bidirectional compliance with the long-standing agreement between WAA and WAW. I know the agreement has the board’s support, and we hope the spirit of the agreement continues to maintain the community’s support as well.

I welcome questions, comments, and concerns, and with the Association’s permission I am happy to provide or publish a copy of the agreement between WAA and WAW (but do need the Association’s permission as it is a valid legal document.)