I wanted to say congratulations to David Schatsky and the team at JupiterResearch, as well as the fine folks at Forrester Research, on the news of FORR’s acquisition of JupiterResearch announced this morning.  Forrester has acquired a great asset and a great group of analysts, researchers, and operational staff, and it was very encouraging to read David Schatsky’s post on the subject, especially:

“Jupiter’s employees are also going to benefit from the combination with Forrester. Forrester execs have enthusiastically expressed to me their respect for the quality of our staff and are eager for us to become part of the expanded company. Jupiter folks will reap the benefits of being part of a larger organization, with its rich resources, track record of effective execution, and commitment to employee growth and career development.”

Somewhat ironic that FORR has been actively looking for someone to cover web analytics since Megan Burns (who will be at the upcoming X Change conference) has transitioned to cover customer experience more broadly.  John Lovett, in my humble opinion, will make a great Forrester analyst and was almost certainly the best candidate for the job … <grin>not that Mr. Colony should have paid a $23M bonus to his current employer.</grin>

While I am excited for all involved, this combination of companies does raise one specific concern within the web analytics sector: Instead of three independent voices in the community providing an objective assessment of the competitive landscape that can be compared and contrasted over time, now there will be only two, Forrester’s view and Gartner’s view.

Don’t get me wrong, I have a tremendous respect for all involved here — otherwise I would never have advocated for inviting Megan, John, and Bill to keynote the upcoming X Change 2008 conference I’m a partner in.  But I do have some small concern that the market’s view of the vendor landscape will soon be defined by one fewer data points, especially since Gartner has not done a formal Magic Quadrant on the sector recently (although Bill did publish a market note on web analytics on July 3rd that I assume is available to Gartner clients.)

I suppose my fears may be unfounded, but given the unusual (and perhaps unreasonable) amount of weight vendors, consultants, and companies alike seem to put on these constellations, waves, and magic quadrants, the loss of one-third of the available information may have implications that won’t manifest for quite some time.  In the context of the consolidation our industry has gone through in the last 24 months, I think technology buyers are even more likely to look for that “objective” viewpoint and rely on published research.

Wait and see, I guess, but I have a few new questions to ask Megan, John, and Bill in a few weeks at the X Change!

Regardless, I’m excited for the folks at Forrester and JupiterResearch and sincerely hope the acquisition proves fruitful for all involved.

The same guys that want you all to believe web analytics is easy has now declared that “Visitor engagement formulas are largely another fad, just like parachute pants and the Hollywood diet. It’s a measure some consultants and vendors can pitch like snake oil.”

Omniture’s point that Visitor Engagement is a bad idea because it has subjective components fails to understand the work that folks like Jim Novo, Steve Jackson, Theo Papadakis, Joseph Carrabis and others have done; it makes me wonder if the author bothered to read anyone’s work on the subject.

Worse, it makes me question Omniture’s long-term commitment to Visual Site customers since Visual (= Omniture Discover OnPremise) is, at least for now, the industry’s leading solution for creating derived measures and experimenting with visitor-level data.  The point seems to be that simple measures of success, such as those provided by SiteCatalyst, are all that are required.

Hmmm …

We pretty much had this same debate a year ago when Avinash Kaushik disagreed with the use of calculated metrics to measure engagement, and I can see that Steve Jackson has already commented as such.  I wouldn’t normally have written about this except the author said one smart thing when he commented you shouldn’t “try to build a better mouse trap, when you’re not taking advantage of the one you’ve got today.”

Agreed.

If you’re thinking about trying to leverage any measure of visitor engagement, regardless of which measure you choose, you should definitely make sure your web analytics house is in order first.  Despite Omniture’s assertion, most people believe that web analytics is hard and requires a sometimes intense focus on people, process, and technology.  If you’re not staffed appropriately, if you haven’t defined your key performance indicators, if you haven’t established core web analytics business processes, and if you haven’t worked to optimize your web analytics implementation then trust me, Visitor Engagement is not for you.

A good analogy is the one provided in Tom Davenport’s book “Competing on Analytics” where he describes how baseball teams like the Oakland A’s and my friend Judah’s beloved Boston Red Sox, and football teams like the New England Patriots have used new and innovative metrics to evaluate the performance of players, concessions workers, and the entire fan experience.  Visitor Engagement is a new measure in web analytics, and thusly it will take a special type of analytical competitor to recognize the opportunity that this “uber measure” can potentially provide.  And just like some teams have shown that they are not ready to adopt new measures to evaluate their business, some companies are simply not ready to explore complex key performance indicators in an effort to “Compete on Web Analytics.”

If you’re like most companies doing web analytics today, it is likely that you will benefit more from focusing internally and learning more about how to leverage people, process, and technology more effectively, rather than look externally for new metrics of success.  You could get a good book on the subject of fundamental key performance indicators and spend a great deal of time implementing what you learn.

But if you’re interested in learning more about an innovative metric that describes the behavior and opportunity that exists with the 97% that don’t convert, a measure that you can apply to your advertising, content, B2B, marketing, or lead generation site that will compliment your otherwise robust key performance indicator suite, and a calculation that describes the level of Attention that visitors are paying to your site, your content, your testing and targeting, etc… well then I guess you’ll have to keep reading my blog (and Jim, and Steve, and Joseph, and a whole host of other people’s work who are committed to working these ideas out rather than just saying “balderdash!”)

If you’re not content to just keep reading and want to know more about my thoughts on Visitor Engagement, know this: I have been exceedingly clear that my measures of Visitor and Audience Engagement are new, and in their newness there is risk in the level of insight they may be able to provide you.  I am not promising you better skin, new hair, or more friends, despite the validation that the measurement of engagement recently received when NextStage was granted a patent for their work on the subject.  But, unlike some people, I have done my homework on the subject, and I continue to have conversations with some of the best companies in the world about how they can use new measures to improve their overall use of web analytic technology.

In the meantime, I guess I’ll put on my parachute pants, grab a glass of “Miracle juice”, and bust out the ol’ Snake Oil.

No, it’s really not, sorry.  But as long as I have your attention I wanted to talk about a thread developing at the Web Analytics Forum about IndexTools not yet being freely available to all that I think is pretty interesting.

Does anyone remember how long Google had Urchin before they gave away Google Analytics for free?  Eight months.  And everyone spent the entire time saying, “Naw, they’ll never give it away … it would be way too expensive!”  Then, remember when they did give Google Analytics away, they immediately had to stop.

So why would anyone expect Yahoo! to be giving IndexTools away for free to everyone barely two months after the acquisition?  Impatience?  Internet time?  An intense and building desire for really good tools for the best of all prices?!?

Eh?

I am very much in the “I bet it will be free” camp, but I suspect that in the midst of everything else Yahoo! has been dealing with lately that the acquisition and roll-out team will take a measured, thoughtful approach towards the next phase of IndexTools.

Based on the letter recently sent to existing partners, it kind of sounds like they want to build a few new data centers and make sure they can handle the needs of their existing customers and partners — nothing really wrong with that, is there?  I bet they’ll also take some time and think about how to avoid some of the problems the other guys had (rollout issues, service outages, extended betas, etc.)

I’ll go ahead and reiterate (and clarify) my original prediction: I think we’ll see free IndexTools for anyone and everyone sometime around Christmas 2008.  I know people around the world are still getting new IndexTools accounts through the partners — you can see that in my Vendor Discovery Tool — but Yahoo! has a lot to consider before they roll IndexTools out to the masses.  I mean, if you think web analytics is hard, you should try developing, maintaining, selling (or not selling), and supporting a web analytics application in this market …

I’ll also bet Yahoo is going to ask for something in return for the accounts as well: Agreeing to run ads on their sites, signing up for a developer account, allowing them use your data to improve their search engine, … something that justifies or offsets some of the cost associated with giving this fairly robust web analytics application away.

Finally, I suspect that Yahoo! will soft-peddle IndexTools when it is widely available.  What I’m hearing is that despite what a lot of people think, Yahoo! doesn’t really want to piss off Google, Omniture, WebTrends, or any of the existing web analytics providers.  But hey, why should they?  Why scream “AWESOME FREE WEB ANALYTICS SOLUTION!” when they can quietly release it and know that word will eventually get out?

Anyway, IndexTools is not free for all, at least not yet.  As Julien Coquet would likely say, c’est la vie!

Regular readers know that I travel to Europe twice a year to do business and work with my partners Satama and LBi/OX2. During my most recent trip I was delighted to have more time to talk at length with a wide variety of companies, practitioners, and thought leaders and a few things stood out in my mind after these conversations:

1. The European market is not unlike the U.S. market in terms of practitioner experience and overall thought leadership. I reported this after my last trip based primarily on survey data, but have been delighted to verify that there are some really amazing people doing some truly great things “across the pond.” This includes end-users and analytics managers inside companies and thought and practice leaders like Steve Jackson at Satama, Aurelie Pols and her team at LBi/OX2, Dennis Mortensen, Lars Johannsen, Oliver Schiffers, Marianina Chapin, Brian Clifton, and a whole lot of folks I’m forgetting to list! In a way, Dennis Mortensen recently became the “Avinash Kaushik” of Europe, a full-blown analytics evangelist!
2. The European market is different than the U.S. market in terms of investment in web analytics, although less so that I previously believed. After countless conversations about technology, people, and process, I kept coming back to the same conclusion: Europe is somewhere between two and four years behind the U.S. in terms of investment in web analytics. More specifically, I believe that the northern countries (Nordics, UK, Holland, primarily) are more like the U.S. in terms of their investment and, broadly speaking, the lag-behind time increases as you move further south. My evidence is anecdotal to be sure, but when I tested the theory most people working for pan-European organizations agreed — do you?

Based on these two points I come to the inevitable conclusion that Europe is about to really take off in terms of the adoption and use of web analytics. Those of you keeping track will recall that it was about two years ago that the practice of web analytics really started to accelerate here in the U.S. I think that the northern European countries especially are about to begin this same type of rapid adoption/expansion we’ve seen over the past two years, which is excellent news!

Now, some of you are certainly saying “well duh, Peterson” either because you work for a U.S.-based vendor who has been bulking up in Europe for the last 12 months, or more likely because you’re European and are experiencing what I’ve described first hand. Fair enough. But my point is not that Europe is running behind the U.S. in adoption of analytics; my point is that European practitioners, consultants, and vendors are in a different place than their U.S.-based counterparts and thusly would benefit from a different support organization than we benefit from here in North America.  Specifically, I believe that Europe should have its own Web Analytics Association.

Yep, I think we need a EuWAA.

Because the needs of European practitioners, vendors, consultants, and even the European media are different, I increasingly suspect that a North American-based WAA may not be best suited to provide the same type of great opportunities, educational events, and benefits we appreciate in the U.S. and Canada. And, while I agreed to not name names, I think some European WAA members don’t disagree with this assessment and would relish the chance to provide/receive additional value from a more locally run association.

A sister organization in Europe, one governed by a European Board of Directors and funded primarily by European vendors and consulting firms, would invariably be better able to serve the needs of specific markets at different stages of analytics maturity. The EuWAA could set country-specific pricing, have both regional and pan-European events, and make decisions that were carefully focused on the needs of different European constituencies.

I’m not saying anything is wrong with the current WAA; I think that the current and past board’s of directors have done a good job working to include European members in the decision making process and overall value chain.  I’m saying is that there is an opportunity to “think different” (to quote Jim Sterne) and consider how a more regional focus might be better for everyone. The NaWAA could focus on North American events, opportunites, outreach, and issues and create even more value for members here in the states and Canada.  And the NaWAA and EuWAA could work together to provide value for emerging markets across the globe.

In terms of funding, I would propose that A) there are a ton of European vendors who would be willing to support the EuWAA, B) that the U.S.-based vendors looking to expand into Europe would be motivated to support the group, C) European companies and practitioners would be more likely to support a European organization focused on the specific needs of European businesses and D) it would be very appropriate for the NaWAA to provide seed capital to this new, sister organization.

Web Analytics Demystified would gladly join as a founding member since we’re a global organization!

I don’t want to get into more specifics here, but if you have an open mind you might see that the idea makes a ton of sense and that a lot of the necessary work has already been done. And while I’m not 100% sure which of the European citizens running for the WAA Board have been elected, between those fine folks, the European thought leaders, and forward thinking European vendors and consultancies, I firmly believe that EuWAA can be done successfully.

I also believe, while some will argue this, that the Web Analytics Association in general will be better for breaking up into regionally focused sister organizations. Because our practice is still relatively young, there is undoubtedly differential geographic maturation and I think this needs to be recognized and treated appropriately.

Anyway, I just wanted to put the idea out there. With the annual meeting/party happening in a few weeks in San Francisco it seemed like as good a time as any to bring EuWAA up and get people talking.

Because I have finally, after much goading, joined the Twitter generation. It took Aaron Gray from WebTrends and like 11 beers (which I felt this morning, mind you) after a very successful Web Analytics Wednesday event here in Portland to get me to join Twitter. Hell, I didn’t even join after meeting Biz Stone and boating around Rotterdam with him last summer (sorry Biz!) But Aaron made me wonder who Twitter streams might be used in the engagement calculation so like a cat to milk I went running.

Incidentally I did not say “Twitter has no value” or at least I don’t think I said that.  I suspect there was some qualification involved (although see my above comment about 11 beers … sheesh!)

Thanks Aaron. Yet another excuse to play with my iPhone, not my kids. You rule.

Want to follow me? I’m easy to find!