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.

Last week I had the privilege and pleasure of attending SEMphonic’s first ever X Change conference. My friend Gary Angel asked me to give the keynote speech and lead a “huddle” on the processes involved in doing web analytics. As I posted back in August, I was pretty excited about the event because of the format SEMphonic had selected — building the event around small-group interactions rather than the “big room, talk-at-you-not-to-you” format so common in conferences today.

Not that I have anything against big conferences, Jim Sterne’s formerly-called-the-Emetrics Summit is still my favorite conference of all time even thought it will probably grow past 600 in Washington next month, and I had a blast at both Shop.ORG (2000+) and Holland’s E-Day (1500+) and hope to be invited to Internet Retailer’s event in Chicago next summer (rumored to be 5000+). But in my experience big conferences actually limit what you’re able to learn if you’re a face-to-face communicator like me. I always end up having short conversations with people in the hallways between presentations or at social events, and the really deep stuff ends up happening in the proverbial (and real!) lobby bar.

SEMphonic X Change was different.

The huddles more-or-less forced us all to expand on our ideas and share our experiences. The one I led on process was great (I thought) and I ended up agreeing to print and produce “NO TAGS, NO TRACKING” t-shirts for all 15 people in the room. But I was absolutely blown away by the huddles I attended:

• Terry Cohen of Digitas, leading a conversation about measuring engagement that covered how engagement can be measured from the microscopic to the macroscopic level.
• Joseph Carrabis of NextStage, leading a conversation about attitudes and communication
• Matt Belkin of Omniture, leading a conversation about combining online and offline data
• Aaron Gray of WebTrends, leading a conversation about using behavioral data (an EXCELLENT huddle IMHO!)

Think about it: Four huddles led by four of the brightest minds in measurement today (okay, three, since Joseph explicitly states that he’s not a measurement wonk like the rest of us, but he’s the biggest thinker I know …) and there were only 10 people in the conversation on average.

How cool is that?

Not all the huddles were apparently as good as the four I attended, but overall everyone I talked to was quite impressed with the format. And everyone I talked to agreed that they would be back at X Change next year (providing Gary and Joel have the event, which I certainly hope they do!)

I strongly recommend that you consider SEMphonic X Change next year if your schedule permits, especially if you’re an opinionated measurement wonk who isn’t afraid to spout off about stuff they believe to be important (yes Ian, you.)

On that point, this event would have been even better if just a few more people would have made the trip, thought-leaders like Avinash Kaushik (shockingly absent, despite being able to basically walk to Napa from his house if you’re in shape), Brett Crosby from Google Analytics, the Jims (Novo and Sterne), at least one Eisenberg (they sent JQvT instead), Stephane Hamel (budget constraints), Rene and Aurelie, Steve Jackson, the aforementioned Ian, and probably a few dozen more people I’m forgetting, apologies!

I say this because I really believe what I said in my keynote:

Collectively “we” are the web analytics industry.

The vendors are not the industry, the Web Analytics Association is not the industry, all of us are the web analytics industry, and collectively we need to debate and discuss what this industry is going to become. But I don’t believe we can make the decisions necessary in the Yahoo! group, on phone calls, or over email. We need to sit down, face-to-face-to-face and talk about standards, debate definitions, compare notes, and use our old fashioned “Web 0.0″ skills to hash out some of the really hard stuff that remains left to tackle.

Jacques Warren made a similar comment in my call for the WAA to “do something” with their recently published standards document and he is spot-on correct. Web analytics is hard, and it isn’t going to get any easier if we just sit and listen. Let’s sit and talk, let’s debate, let’s act.

’nuff said.

I’ll leave you with this parting shot about X Change, a comparison I’m shocked that nobody smarter than I has already made:

• Emetrics is the Web 1.0 conference for web analytics where you will learn a ton and be very happy
• X Change is the Web 2.0 conference for web analytics where you will contribute a ton and be very satisfied

Mad props to Gary, Joel, Grace, Barbara, Phil, June, and everyone else at SEMphonic for throwing such an amazing event!

On my fifth and final (working) day in Europe I had the distinct pleasure of presenting at OX2’s Web Analytics Day in Brussels, Belgium. I had been working directly with Rene and Aurelie to promote this event as our companies have a business partnership and I am very happy to say the event was a tremendous success with over 100 people in attendance.

I presented three times covering my now well documented “Web Analytics is Easy?” presentation, the subject of key performance indicators, and my newest presentation covering what I am calling “Web Analytics 2.0″ This third presentation worried me a bit since it is more technical than the stuff I usually present but it was very well received according to everyone I talked to. Aside from my work, there were great presentations from Aurelie, David Rhee, and a handful of vendors including WebTrends, Omniture, NedStat, IndexTools, and of course the now famous Microsoft Gatineau.

Continuing my theme of finally getting to meet some very bright folks in Europe, here are a few I was smart enough to get photos of while at Web Analytics Day.

Rene Otamendi from OX2, Marianina Chapin (the Web Analytics Princess) and “Wanderin” David Rhee, super-moderator of the Web Analytics Forum, blogger, and the newest OX2 employee in Germany.

Marianina, her friend from Great Britain (whose name I am forgetting, forgive me!) and Michael Notte from Toyota Europe who gave a nice presentation on behalf of WebTrends.

Luc Peeters, a consultant for Digitmedia in Belgium, who was very nice to talk to and paid me a very high compliment, saying my presentation was better than one he had seen from Nicholas Negroponte of the the MIT Media Labs. Very kind, indeed, if perhaps a wee stretch of the truth …

My best friend in Italy, Giovanni Lorenzoni, who writes an Italian web analytics blog at blog.webanalytics.it. Giovanni has a lot of enthusiasm for web analytics and is excited about how things are shaping up in Europe of late.

I was also sent a handful of photos from my presentation in Rotterdam at eDay. Now, I’m a bit camera shy normally but you can get an idea of what eDay was like via this photo of me (probably asking the audience if they thought web analytics was easy or not)

The behind-the-ears microphone was classic and made me feel like I was on American Idol.

All in all I have to say I very much enjoyed my European trip.  Thanks to great people like the folks at SATAMA and OX2, the nice people at eDay, and all the great fans of my blog and my writing that I met all across Europe proving positive feedback about the work I’ve been doing since I left Visual Sciences four months ago.

I hope to get back to Europe this coming Spring, and hopefully I’ll be able to bring my wife and spend a few days actually relaxing and enjoying all the beautiful scenery that I had to rush by this time.  Until then I’m off this afternoon to sunny Las Vegas for the Advanced Analytics session at Shop.ORG then on to SEMphonic X Change where I will be giving the keynote speech.  If you’re at either of these events please come and introduce yourself!

I’ve blogged about my travel schedule a few times but tomorrow I’m heading out on the official “Web Analytics Demystified World Tour” and I’d love to catch up with my blog readers if you’re coming to any of the following events:

• Tuesday, September 11th I will be with the great Lars Johansson at the totally sold out Web Analytics Wednesday event in Stockholm, Sweden.  This event is co-sponsored by the nice folks at WebTrends, Omniture, and IndexTools and promises to be a full-evening of web analytics “demystification” for the 80+ folks who will be in attendance.  I will be giving my “Web Analytics is Easy!” presentation and then we’ll have a panel of experts that includes Dennis Mortenson of IndexTools, Ian Tickle from WebTrends, Steve Jackson from Satama, and Magnus Hultman from Omniture.  Despite this event being sold out/standing room only, you can still contact Lars about getting on the wait list.
• Thursday, September 13th I will be presenting at e.Day 2007 in Rotterdam Holland.  I’m excited about presenting at e.Day since I will be working along side industry giants like Biz Stone (Twitter), Rolf Skyberg (eBay), Martin Stiksel (Last FM), Sep Kamvar (iGoogle), and Mark Fletcher (Startupping.com but you may know him as the founder of Bloglines)  You can see the entire line up of speakers at the e.Day web site.
• Friday, September 14th I will be presenting three times at OX2’s Web Analytics Day in Brussels, Belgium.  I am hugely excited about this event since I will get to hang out with my good friends Rene, Aurelie, David Rhee, and even Ian Thomas from Microsoft who will be on hand to give the first public demo of Microsoft Gatineau.  Some great news that you may not have already read is that WEB ANALYTICS DAY IS NOW TOTALLY FREE for practitioners of web analytics.  Yep, thanks to the generosity of the sponsors, practitioners can join us at no charge and consultants pay only a small fee to attend this event that is sure to be talked about in Europe for years to come.  I hope you’ll join me in Brussels!

When I get home from Europe I will have barely enough time to clean my clothes and catch up on email before heading right back out on the road, this time in the American West.

• Tuesday, September 18th I will be leading the Advanced Analytics workshop at Shop.ORG in Las Vegas, Nevada, working again with my good friend and former co-worker Patti Freeman-Evans of JupiterResearch.  Those of you who have been to Shop.ORG in the past know what an excellent event this is and how much fun it will be in Las Vegas.  Patti and I will be giving short presentations and then we’ll be leading an expert practitioner panel that features my good friends Dylan Lewis from TurboTax, Kim Weller from Circuit City, and Michael Fried from Backcountry.com.  If you’re coming to Shop.ORG, please join us in the Advanced Analytics session!
• Thursday, September 20th I will be giving the keynote presentation at SEMphonic X Change in Napa Valley, California.  I am hugely honored to have been asked to present the keynote at this event, especially considering the rock star lineup that will be on hand to run “huddles” and help make X Change a unique event in the web analytics community.  If you haven’t already decided to go to X Change and would like to join us, send me an email and I’ll gladly help you save 15% off the cost of attending.

If you have any questions about how to hook up with me at any of these presentations, please don’t hesitate to write.  I always love meeting my book and blog readers in person and am always happy to sign copies of Web Analytics Demystified and Web Site Measurement Hacks if you bring them along.

See you on the tour!