Archive for 'Vendors'

Just a quick note of thanks to OpinionLab, ObservePoint, and Splunk who have joined I.Q. Workforce as official sponsors of our global Web Analytics Wednesday series for 2012. Thanks to these very generous organizations, my partners and I are going to be able to continue to help Web Analytics Wednesday evolve and continue to be the gathering point for digital measurement practitioners and analysts around the globe.

What these added sponsors mean to all of you is bigger budgets for Web Analytics Wednesday which we hope will lead to bigger and better gatherings. Whereas we typically limited reimbursement from the Global Fund in the past to around $100 USD, we are now able to provide larger sums based on need and demonstrated commitment to the event.

More. Free. Money.

If you have any questions about hosting a Web Analytics Wednesday or how these funds can be used please email me directly. Otherwise I hope you will join me in thanking all four of these companies for their generous support of the entire digital measurement community.  You can tweet them at @corryprohens, @observepoint, @opinionlab, and @splunk or let them know you appreciate their efforts in the comments below.

A recurring theme in our strategy practice at Web Analytics Demystified is one of data quality and the businesses ability and willingness to trust web analytics data. Adam wrote about this back in 2009, I covered it again in 2010, and all three of us continue to support our client’s efforts to validate and improve on the foundation of their digital measurement efforts.

Not that I am surprised — far from it — given that the rate at which senior leadership and traditional business stakeholders have been calling us to help get their analytical house in order. It turns out management doesn’t want to “get over” gaps in data quality; they want reliable numbers they can trust to the best of the company’s ability to inform the broader, business-wide decision making process.

To this end, and thanks to the generosity of our friends at ObservePoint, I am happy to announce the availability of a free white paper Data Quality and  the Digital World. Following up on our 2010 report on page tagging and tag proliferation, this paper drills into the tactical changes that companies can make to work to ensure the best possible data for use across the Enterprise. In addition to providing ten “tips” to help you create trust in your online data, we provide examples from ObservePoint customers including Turner, TrendMicro, and DaveRamsey.com, each of whom have a great story to tell about data auditing and validation.

One surprise when doing the research for this document was that multiple companies cited examples of something we have coined “data leakage.” Data leakage happens when business users, agencies, and other digital stakeholders start deploying technology without approval and, more importantly, without a clear plan to manage access to that technology. Examples are myriad and almost always seem harmless — that is until something goes wrong and the wrong people have access to your web traffic, keyword, or transactional data.

The idea of data leakage is one of the reasons that we have teamed up with BPA Worldwide to create the Web Analytics Demystified GUARDS audit service, and unsurprisingly GUARDS audits include an ObservePoint analysis to help identify possible risks when it comes to consumer data privacy. You can learn more about the GUARDS consumer data privacy audit on our web site.

If you’re being asked about the accuracy and integrity of your web-collected data, if you know you cannot trust the data but aren’t sure what to do about it, or if you suspect your company may potentially be leaking data through tag-based technologies, I would strongly encourage you to download Data Quality and  the Digital World from the ObservePoint site. What’s more, if you need help reseting expectations about data and it’s usage across your business, don’t hesitate to give one of us a call.

Download Data Quality and the Digital World now!

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?

Much to my chagrin, having been outed by the local newspaper for my original dismissal of Google+, it appears that the web analytics community is prepared to go “all in” in the social network. What’s more, because we’re no longer bound by 100-odd characters (after we @respond and #measure tag), suddenly some incredibly bright minds are able to rapidly contribute to an emerging meme.

Interested? I knew you would be.

Head on over to my stream at Google+ and catch up on the conversation stemming from Tim Wilson’s recent critique of Adobe SiteCatalyst 15. Certainly the thread has diverged somewhat but if you’re in web analytics and on Google+ we would all welcome your contribution.

>>> Web Analytics Platforms are Fundamentally Broken

If you’re not on Google+ click on this link as I have bunches of invites I can share.

Back in February our newest partner Adam Greco waxed philosophical about Google offering a paid version of Google Analytics. He got a bunch of feedback and all-in-all the post raised some interesting questions about Google’s place in the web analytics marketplace. Now there is a new rumor — one far less substantiated than the so called “Enterprise” offering Adam discussed — but one with potentially more far reaching implications.

On a call today, we heard that Google may be considering charging everyone for the use of Google Analytics.

Everyone? Yep. Everyone.

The details were sparse and wholly unsubstantiated, but come from a source that we generally trust as reliable. And while we normally don’t deal with rumors here at Web Analytics Demystified, given Google’s footprint — conservatively estimated to be around 30,000 business sites around the world with perhaps an order (or two) more non-business sites being tracked today — the implications of this rumor are interesting for two reasons:

1. If Google were to charge a fee similar to other of their offerings, say $100 per year, to use Google Analytics, these fees may produce millions of dollars in annual revenue (and profits) for Google and their investors. Outside projections for Google Analytics installations range into the millions, which, given a reasonable retention rate (say, 10%) would produce substantial revenue. Given the changes Google is going through right now on their management team it’s hard to say how important “revenue” is, especially when the bandwidth and data storage costs for Google Analytics are likely to be significant given estimated volumes and at a time when Google is being criticized over their increasing operating costs. Given the constant criticism over the years of Google’s inability to generate profits outside of their advertising business perhaps this sort of obvious revenue is suddenly appealing.
2. If Google were to start forcing folks to pay, this might be a huge boon to the emerging “secondary” market of web and digital analytics vendors including Woopra, Chartbeat, Performable, Clicky, Kissmetrics, and a rapidly expanding set of web and mobile analytics vendors who largely charge tens to hundreds of dollars per month. Despite the odds given the footprint “traditional” web analytics vendors have within the Enterprise, combined with the hegemony Google has over entry-level businesses and small companies, in the last three years we have seen a surprising “second coming” of web analytics vendors gaining traction in a variety of niches. Be it real-time analytics for blogs (Chartbeat, Woopra), funnel analysis (Kissmetrics), heat-mapping and session recording (Robot Replay, ClickTale, Reinvigorate), or customer-focused analytics (Performable), these companies are, by-and-large small, agile, and somehow managing to gain adoption despite the presence of Google and “the bigs”.

This second implication is very interesting to me … the fact that against well-established, already deployed, and in Google’s case completely free competition, these start ups are able to grow and, at least in a few cases, thrive (see Clicktale, Robot Replay who was acquired by Foresee Results, Performable, etc.) Imagine the glee that founders and investors in these companies would experience if Google Analytics were to put up a real (albeit potentially small) barrier to entry. It likely wouldn’t be enough to stop companies, but it might be enough to make them think “Hmm, I wonder what else is out there?”

Given that most of these start-ups are focusing on ease-of-use and specific use cases, and in many instances are doing a pretty darn good job (my opinion), this pause might be exactly what these start-ups need. Heck, it might even help some of the bigs, given the trouble they have had selling against Google Analytics juxtaposed against the dramatic interface changes that some are poised to unleash. Don’t get me wrong — I’m not saying that Google charging $100 for analytics magically re-opens the door for traditional vendors with annual contracts in the tens of thousands of dollars. But every substantial change in the marketplace is an opportunity for great management teams, and Google suddenly charging anything would surely be a substantial change.

But I digress.

At the end of the day I personally consider it highly unlikely that Google would start to charge everyone just because they can — it just seems like an unnecessary and “evil” thing to do (despite the fact that we did the same thing earlier this year at Twitalyzer without any negative impact on our business.) Still, Google is held to a pretty high standard, and I suspect that the (relatively) small amount of revenue they would ultimately generate is hardly worth the negative press they would likely receive.

But I’m interested in what you folks think. Would you pay $100 per year for Google Analytics as it exists today? What if they offered more features or functionality? If the latter, what would they need to add to get you to pony up? Or would you immediately pull the code off your site if Google required any kind of payment? If so, why?

I welcome your comments and conversation.