Archive for 'Random Thoughts'

Happy New Year everyone! I hope you had a relaxing and joyous Holiday season and are as excited as I am about what the coming year has in store. While I’m not much for making predictions I am a big fan of making resolutions, both personal and professional. Here are five high-level resolutions that Adam, John, and I have made for 2012:

We resolve to continue to provide great value to our clients.

A consulting business like ours is only as good as the value we provide on an ongoing basis. To that end, all of us are committed to working closely with all of our clients to ensure we deliver business insights and recommendations designed to make our key stakeholders look like heroes within their organizations. While we are intensely proud of the work our client Best Buy has done to become more analytically-minded, we want all of our clients to appreciate the same type of high-visibility wins.

We resolve to have Demystified to evolve with our industry.

You don’t need to be an analyst to see that the “web analytics” industry is changing. Increasingly the work our clients do is less about the “web” and more about the entire digital world, and the people, process, and technology required to analyze and optimize the digital world are different than those we have used in the past. We started thinking about this transformation back in 2009, but at Web Analytics Demystified we are committed to adding resources and knowledge to be the best guides possible as our clients begin to leverage digital business intelligence and data sciences.

We resolve to continue to provide great support to the measurement community.

Web Analytics Demystified is fortunate to be more than just a consultancy, we are part of the foundation of the entire digital measurement community around the world. Through our Web Analytics Wednesday event series, our Analysis Exchange educational efforts, our support for the Web Analytics Association, and now our ACCELERATE conference series we are able to connect with analysts around the world. In 2012 we resolve to do more for the community — watch our web site for news in the coming weeks about all of these efforts.

We resolve to provide more web analytics education in 2012 than ever before.

Our educational effort, Analysis Exchange, has succeeded beyond expectation since it’s inception in 2010, thanks largely to the efforts of Executive Director Wendy Greco. With nearly 1,700 members and nearly 200 completed projects, the Exchange has become the de facto source for hands-on web analytics education. But we believe we have found a way to do even more with the Exchange in 2012, creating more projects and opportunities for any individual motivated to break into this industry.

We resolve to make ACCELERATE the best small digital measurement conference in the world.

In 2011 we tried something new with the ACCELERATE conference. While mistakes were made, and an awful lot of nice people weren’t able to join us due to demand, we believe we are converging on an innovative conference format that will continue to be 100% free to attend. But we promise to not just stop when we find something that works — we are resolved to push ACCELERATE to be the most engaging, most fun, and most valuable small event in the industry.

How about you? What are you resolved to do in 2012?

Last week I had the pleasure of traveling to Columbus, Ohio to participate in Web Analytics Wednesday, hosted by Resource Interactive’s Tim Wilson and generously sponsored by the fine folks at Foresee. We opted for an “open Q&A” format that turned out pretty well. Turns out the web analysts in Ohio are a pretty sharp bunch so all of the questions I fielded were of the “hardball” type.

One question in particular surprised me, and the answer I gave forced me to elucidate a point I have been pondering for some time but have never voiced in public. The question came from Elizabeth Smalls (@smallsmeasures, go follow her now) who asked, and I paraphrase, “How can we best explain the differences in the numbers we see between systems?” and ”Is there any chance the web analytics industry will ever have ‘standards’?”

Long-time readers know I have followed the Web Analytics Associations’s efforts to establish standards closely over the years, helping to create awareness about the work and also pushing the Association to “put teeth” behind their definitions and encourage vendors to either move towards the “standard” definitions or, at worst, elucidate where they are compliant and where they differ from the WAA’s work.

Sadly the WAA’s “standards” never really caught on as a set of baseline definitions against which all systems could be compared to help explain some of the differences in the data. As a result practitioners around the globe still struggle when it comes time to explain these differences, especially when moving from one paid vendor to another.  But none of this matters anymore for one simple reason …

Google Analytics has become the de facto standard for web analytics.

Google has become the standard for web analytics by sheer force of might, persistence, and dedication. By every measure, Google Analytics is the world’s most popular and widely deployed web analytics solution. Hell, in our Analysis Exchange efforts we focus exclusively on the use of Google Analytics because A) we know that 99 times out of 100 we will find it already deployed and B) nearly all of our mentors have had enough exposure to Google Analytics to effectively teach it to our students.

What’s more, as Forrester’s Joe Stanhope opined the recently published Forrester Wave for Web Analytics, web analytics as we knew it doesn’t really exist anymore:

“Few web analytics vendors restrict their remit to pure on-site analytics. Most vendor road maps incorporate emerging media such as social and mobile channels, data agnostic integration and analysis features, usability for a broad array of analytics stakeholders, and scalability to handle the rising influx of data and activity.”

Joe says “few” vendors remained focused on on-site analytics, but it would be more precise to say “one” vendor — Google — has maintained interest in how site operators measure their efforts with any level of exclusivity and sincerity. In fact, I don’t think we need to call the industry “web analytics” anymore … it is probably more accurate to say we have “Google Analytics” and “Everything Else.”

Everything else is enterprise marketing platforms. Everything else is integrated online marketing suites. Everything else … is all of the stuff that has been layered on top of solutions we have historically considered “web analytics” as a response to an event that can only be accurately described as the single most important acquisition in our sector, period.

Google Analytics is the de facto standard for web analytics, and this is great news.

Assuming you take care with your Google Analytics implementation, whenever there is a question about the data you will have a fairly consistent[1] view for comparison. Switching from one vendor to another? Use Google Analytics to help explain the differences between the two systems! Worried that your paid vendor implementation is missing data? Compare it to Google Analytics to ensure that you have complete page coverage! Not sure if a vendor’s recent change in their use of cookies impacted their data accuracy? Yes, you guessed it, compare it to Google Analytics!

With Google Analytics you have a totally free standard against which all other data can be reconciled.

Now keep in mind, I am absolutely not saying that all you need is Google Analytics — nothing could be further from the truth. Despite a nice series of updates and the emergence of a paid solution that may be appropriate for some companies, I agree with Stanhope when he says that “Google Analytics Premium still lags enterprise competitors in several areas such as data integration, administration, and data processing …”

But that’s a debate for the lobby bar, not this blog post.

If you’re looking for a set of rules that can be universally applied when it comes to the most basic and fundamental definitions for the measures, metrics, and dimensions that our industry is built upon, you don’t have to look anymore. Google has solved that problem for the rest of us, and we should thank them. Now, thanks to Google, we can focus on some of the real problems facing our industry … which again, is a debate best left to the lobby bar.

What do you think? Are you running Google Analytics on your site? Do you use it when you see anomalies in data collected through other systems? Have you used it to validate a move from one paid vendor to another? Or do you believe that the WAA standards already provide the solution I am ascribing to Google?

As always I welcome your opinions and feedback.

[1] Yes, when Google changed the definition of a “session” that impacted their consistency, but once they corrected the bug they introduced it seems the number of complaints has gone down significantly. What’s more, the change made sense and in general we should be in favor of “improving on standards whenever possible” don’t you think?

You may have noticed I have been pretty quiet in my blog lately aside from sharing news about our ACCELERATE event in San Francisco in November. It’s partially because honestly I’ve been swamped with new clients, existing work, and the never-ending effort to be a good husband, dad, and friend in the midst of Demystifying web analytics …

But being busy is no excuse to stop sharing ideas and encouraging conversation so let’s dive into something that has increasingly become a pet-peeve of mine: the notion leveraging web analytics to create a “data-driven” business.

I’m sure I have used this phrase in the past in an effort to describe the transformation that companies need to go through in the digital world, relying less on “gut feel” and more on cold, hard data to guide business decision making. Hell, a lot of smart of people have, including Omniture’s Brent Dykes and Google Analytics Evangelist Avinash Kaushik who has gone so far as to describe creating a data-driven culture as the “holiest of holy grails.”

Becoming “data driven” is the way to silence the HIPPO and to more firmly establish the value of our collective investments in digital measurement, analysis, and optimization technology. It sounds great, except for one thing:

A “data-driven business” would be doomed to fail.

I think that perhaps what people mean when they talk about being “data-driven” is the need for a heightened awareness of the numerous source of data and information we have available in the digital world, enough so that we are able to take advantage of these sources to create insights and make recommendations. On this point I agree — better use of available data in the decision making process is an awesome thing indeed.

My concern arises from the idea that any business of even moderate size and complexity can be truly “driven” by data. I think the right word is “informed” and what we are collectively trying to create is “increasingly data-informed and data-aware businesses and business people” who integrate the wide array of knowledge we can generate about digital consumers into the traditional decisioning process. The end-goal of this integration is more agile, responsive, and intelligent businesses that are better able to compete in a rapidly changing business environment.

Perhaps this is mere semantics — you say “potato” I say “tuberous rhizome”  — but given the sheer number of consultants, vendors, and practitioners talking about creating, powering, and working in the mythical “data-driven business” I have started to worry that we’re about to shoot ourselves in the collective foot. We (meaning the web analytics industry as a whole) have done this before, first by claiming that web analytics was easy, then by insisting that cookies were harmless … and personally I’d prefer we avoid yet another self-imposed crisis of credibility if possible.

And while this may be semantics, I do disagree with Brent Dykes assertion that in the absence of carrot-and-stick accountability that web analytics breaks down and fails to create any benefit within the business, although I do understand fully where Mr. Dykes is coming from. I simply have not seen nearly enough evidence that eschewing the type of business acumen, experience, and awareness that is the very heart-and-soul of every successful business in favor of a “by the numbers” approach creates the type of result that the “data-driven” school seems to be evangelizing for.

What I do see in our best clients and those rare, transcendent organizations that truly understand the relationship between people, process, and technology — and are able to leverage that knowledge to inform their overarching business strategy — is a very healthy blend of data and business knowledge, each applied judiciously based on the challenge at hand. Smart business leaders leveraging insights and recommendations made by a trusted analytics organization — not automatons pulling levers based on a hit count, p-value, or conversion rate.

Kishore Swaminathan, Accenture’s chief scientist, in his discussion on “What the C-suite should know about analytics” outlines how an over-dependence on data can lead to “analysis-paralysis”, stating:

“Data is a double-edged sword. When properly used, it can lead to sound and well-informed decisions. When improperly used, the same data can lead not only to poor decisions but to poor decisions made with high confidence that, in turn, could lead to actions that could be erroneous and expensive.”

Success with web analytics and optimization requires a balance, and business leaders who will be successful analytical competitors in the future will need to develop a top-down strategy to govern how their businesses will leverage both digitally-generated insights and the collective know-how of their organizations. Conversely, being “driven” implies imbalance and over-correction — going out of your way to devalue experience, ignore process, and eschew established governance in favor of a new, entirely metrics-powered approach towards decision making.

You can do this, but to Swaminathan’s point, what if the numbers you’re using are wrong?

I think that creating a “data informed” business is a huge victory and for most companies a major step in the right direction. What’s more, working to create a “data informed” business shows respect for the hard work, commitment, and passion your employees have for their jobs and your company and products.

Rather than walk in and “embarrass the boss” with your profound and amazing knowledge of customer interactions, you can actively work with your management team by providing insights and recommendations that reflect your knowledge of how the entire business works, not just your amazing talent as web analytics implementer (or analyst, whatever …)

But I digress.

I’m interested in your collective thoughts here people. Am I over-reaching after a blogging hiatus and unnecessarily sniping in hopes of an early Fall dust-up in Google+? Or have you had the same thoughts and/or concerns, that by insisting that everyone needs to do exactly what the data tells them that we risk alienating (again) the very consumers of our efforts? Do you work at a truly “data driven” business and do what the numbers tell you each and every time? Or are you working to create a practice where otherwise smart, hard-working, and passionate marketers, merchandisers, and business leaders can benefit from the type of information and insights you are uniquely able to provide as a digital measurement, analysis, and optimization specialist?

While you consider your response I’ll leave you with a story that has shaped some of my thinking about web analytics over my career. Years ago my good friend Shari Cleary brought me into CBS News in New York to train her editorial team on Hitbox (yeah, Hitbox, I told you it was years ago!) Most of my clients at the time were “new school” but not these guys — they were hardcore news editors from the TV side of the business who had been tasked with making digital news work.

I talked and talked and talked about how powerful Hitbox was and how real-time analytics was going to power the content they put out there in the world. The editors were polite and showed real interest in the training until at one point the oldest and most grizzled of the group stopped me.

“Son, we’re not going to let the data make the decisions for us regarding editorial content,” he said with all sincerity. I was, of course, shocked to hear this — I mean, hell, that is what Hitbox was for! Figuring out which stories generated page views and which needed to be rolled off the page into obscurity.

“Umm, why is that?” I asked, figuring he’d lay into me about the inaccuracy of the system or how painful it was to use Hitbox …

“Because if we let the data drive editorial, all you will read about at CBS News is Paris Hilton’s breasts and Lindsay Lohan’s drinking problem.”

Needless to say, I stopped talking about real-time, data-driven changes to editorial content.

As always I welcome your comments, criticism, and feedback.

I got a nice note this morning from Mike Levin at the Web Analytics Association:

“CONGRATULATIONS! You have been nominated for a WAA Award of Excellence in the category of: Most Influential Industry Contributor (individual) Your nomination recognizes the contributions you and/or your company have made to the web analytics industry. It is an honor to be nominated and the WAA congratulates you on your success. “

While I am honored by the recognition and delighted to have been nominated I told Mike that I am declining to participate in the voting.

Mike wrote me back and seemed surprised but my thinking is very simple: I have been very fortunate in my web analytics career and have received lots of recognition from my peers, my clients, and the press. I’m not one to bang my own drum and brag about my accomplishments … I prefer to just do my thing, help my clients and the community, and build a strong company for my partners and associates.

So I humbly and politely decline the honor and instead will cast my vote for folks I believe to be truly deserving of an industry honor. Here are the people I will be voting for:

• Web Analytics Rising Star: Jason Thompson.  Jason is still a bit rough around the edges but I love his style and commitment to getting things done.  If I can vote twice I am voting for Michele “Jojoba” Hinojosa … her passion is palpable and her enthusiasm is infectious.
• Most Influential Industry Contributor: John Lovett. I’m not sure John is actually eligible because he is on the WAA Board but his work on the WAA Code of Ethics is a monumental achievement and one that has the potential to shape our industry for years to come.  If I can vote twice my second nod goes to Jim Sterne … who has done more for this industry than Jim Sterne?  Damn right, nobody!
• Most Influential Vendor: Google.  Most of the positive changes we have seen in the past two years in web analytics can be derived either directly or indirectly to the work that Brett Crosby and the team at Google Analytics put out there.  Second vote goes to Omniture given the critical mass they have been able to create and the big strides they made since the Adobe acquisition on customer support and overall focus.

UPDATE: OMG I didn’t realize that Corry Prohens was running a shameless and ruthless campaign to win the “Influential Agency/Vendor” award.  You should read his “shameless campaign” blog post and consider voting for Corry.

• Client/Practitioner of the Year: Best Buy. Difficult to not vote for one of your own favorite clients but I hope you will all come to my keynote presentation with Lynn Lanphier at Emetrics and hear why I cast this vote.  Second vote? Dell, for taking the advice I gave them last year to heart and who are now kicking ass and taking names for testing and optimization. Bravo!
• Technology of the Year: Analysis Exchange. Now, of course, I’m not really going to vote for something I helped create, but I am pretty damn proud of the work we have done and with Wendy Greco at the helm things are only getting better.  If I could vote twice … I wouldn’t, because I’d be tempted to vote for Twitalyzer LOL!

Again, I do appreciate the nod from the WAA and am looking forward to the party — the Web Analytics Demystified and Keystone Solutions crews will be there in force. I wish everyone nominated for the WAA awards the best of luck and, as a native of Chicago, remember to vote early and vote often!

Don’t forget to nominate your favorite web analytics superstar!

Happy New Years my readers! I hope the recent holidays treated you well regardless of your faith, persuasion, or geographic location. I wanted to take a quick break from all the heavy privacy chatter these past few months and tell a little story about the generosity of our community and one individual in particular.

If you follow me on Twitter you may have noticed me cryptically tweeting “it’s not about you, it’s about the community” from time to time. I started sending this update as a subtle hint to a few folks who harp on and on about their accomplishments, products, and “research” in the Twitter #measure community … but sadly those folks never got the hint (so much for being subtle, huh?)

Over time the tweet became something larger — it became a reminder about what we all are capable of when we think about more than our own little world.  ”It’s not about you, it’s about the community” is about some of the greatest contributors in the history of web analytics, people like:

• Jim Sterne, who years ago realized that we needed a place to gather, and who wisely picked the Four Seasons Biltmore in Santa Barbara, California.  While Emetrics may have become a profit-generating machine, those of you who know Jim and know history understand that the conference is as much about and for the community as it is anything else;
• Jim Sterne, Bryan Eisenberg, Rand Schulman, Greg Drew, Seth Romanow, and others who founded the Web Analytics Association years ago when it was clear that we needed some type of organizing body, committing themselves to hundreds of hours of work without thinking about how they would make money off of the effort;
• Jim Sterne (again!!!!) who has been making sure that we all know who is doing what where and when via his “Sterne Measures” email newsletter for as long as I can remember;
• Avinash Kaushik, Google’s famed Analytics Evangelist, who has long committed the profits from his books on web analytics to two amazing charities;
• Super-contributors to the Web Analytics Forum at Yahoo Groups, folks like Kevin Rogers, Yu Hui, Jay Tkachuk, and dozen more who still take the time to answer questions from newer members of this rapidly expanding community;
• Past and current Web Analytics Association Board members and super-volunteers, folks like Alex Yoder, Jim Novo, Raquel Collins, Jim Humphries, and so many more who give their time and energy every month to make sure the Association continues to evolve and grow;
• Activists and evangelists like my partner John Lovett, who in the midst of writing his first book on social media analytics has taken the time to shepherd our Web Analysts Code of Ethics effort through the Web Analytics Association Board of Directors;
• Everyone who has ever hosted a Web Analytics Wednesday event, including luminaries like Judah Phillips, June Dershewitz, Tim Wilson, Bob Mitchell, Emer Kirrane, Perti Mertanen, Alex Langshur, Anil Batra, Ruy Carneiro, Dash Lavine, Jenny Du, David Rogers, and way too many more folks to list who contribute their valuable time to help grow organic web analytics communities locally;
• All of the over 1,000 members of the Analysis Exchange, many of whom have contributed to multiple projects to make sure that nonprofit organizations around the world have access to web analytics insights;
• Dozens of others I am forgetting, and probably hundreds more I have never even met …

When I think about this list of people and their individual contributions to the web analytics community it is almost overwhelming — how lucky we are to have such considerate and giving friends!  Still, people have been giving back for years and so it is rare that I see something or someone in the community that really blows me away …

Until recently.

Not everyone knows Jason Thompson, and I suspect he would be the first to admit that not everyone who knows him actually likes him, but if I had to pick one “web analytics super-hero” for 2010 Jason would be my hand’s-down, number one choice.  See, Jason was smart enough to not just get the web analytics community to give back to our community, he managed to get our community to help provide clean water to an entire community in a developing nation.

Having worked repeatedly as a volunteer with Analysis Exchange Jason was introduced to charity:water, a nonprofit organization who’s vision is very simple: to provide clean, safe drinking water for everyone on the planet.

Water.

Not a great blog or free books, not data or solution profilers, but water that mothers can bring to their children. Clean, pure water that I would venture each and every one of the members of the web analytics community takes for granted and rarely even considers the source and its availability.

But Jason thought about it, and what’s more, Jason did something about it. Thanks to some cool new technology Jason was able to donate his 36th birthday to help raise $500. By leveraging Twitter and his web analytics community he was able to raise that $500 by December 18th.  Having met his goal before his birthday Jason didn’t stop and settle, he set the bar higher, working first to raise $1,000, then $3,000, and finally $5,000, enough to provide water for an entire village – 80 people for 20 years.

Jason’s effort brought out the best in our community again, collecting donations from luminaries and lay-users alike … hell, he even got money from his mom! Some of the biggest names in web analytics helped Jason along, and donations large and small rolled in right up until Ensighten’s Josh Manion put in the last $300 on Jason’s birthday, putting him over the top and completing his final goal.

Honestly I don’t know Jason very well, but I do know passion and greatness when I see it. Jason once again served as a reminder that “it’s not about you, it’s about the community” and he did more than just tweet obnoxiously … he put his time and money where his mouth is and did something real.

Bravo, Mr. Thompson.  Bravo.

If you don’t know Jason I highly recommend following him in Twitter (@usujason, if you’re into Twitter) and, if you see him at a conference or event do like I will and buy the man a drink. I for one am going to let Jason be an example of how I can work even harder to make a difference both inside and outside of the web analytics community in 2011 and beyond.

Hopefully some of you will do the same.