Archive for 'Web Analytics Business Process'

In San Francisco during the “Guru Breakfast” event Rene Dechamps asked a question about the importance of process to web analytics. This is clearly something I believe to be tremendously important (quit my job, printed business cards, etc.) and Bryan Eisenberg commented that “web analytics was 10 percent technology, 20 percent people, and 70 percent process …”

Rene said he would post the video he took of this conversation soon, but suffice to say Avinash Kaushik, Jim Sterne and I all agreed with Bryan. Process is very important to web analytics, but the importance of process is often overlooked.

Recently a reporter got me thinking about these numbers, so I would like to formally propose an update to beloved guru Kaushik’s widely quoted 10/90 rule. I call it the 10/20/70 Rule for Achievable Web Analytics Success. Here is what it says …

• Our Goal: Highest value from our investment in web analytics
• Percent of time and effort spent on the selection and deployment of their technology platform: 10%
• Percent of time and effort spent on the hiring and allocation of really smart people: 20%
• Percent of time and effort spent on the process of actually “doing” web analytics, leveraging both technology and people: 70%
• Bottom line for Achievable Success: It’s the process

The explicit recognition of the value of process resolves some of the issues people have with Kaushik’s original proposal, two of which include:

1. It is very difficult to spend $90 of every $100 on “intelligent resources/analysts” given the extreme dearth of available talent relative to the number of jobs currently open in the market today. Even Kaushik’s former organization (Intuit) is, to the best of my knowledge still looking for his replacement, several months later, ironically highlighting the difficulty of finding good talent.
2. Unless you’re gonna go the Google Analytics route (spending $0 on technology) and hire inexpensive resources to install the software (likely not one of the GAAC partners, although I’m not entirely sure what they charge) you’ll be hard pressed to spend $10 of every $100 on software license and implementation.

Now, I obviously agree with Avinash’s emphatic call to hire smart people. I’m a huge fan of dedicating resources to web analytics projects and have been since 2004 when JupiterResearch published my report Web Analytics: Spending, Staffing, and Vendor Selection. You need bright people to run your web analytics applications and to analyze data (although you may not need the people you think you need … more on that in another post at another time!)

But I think that the right way to frame the right approach to web analytics is not in terms of how you spend your valuable money, it’s how you spend your valuable time. So the 10/20/70 rule updates Kaushik’s rule by applying the appropriate emphasis squarely on the processes involved in “doing” web analytics.

Remember, you can always make more money, but it’s hard to make more time. Fortunately, some pretty bright people seem to agree with me.

Consider this: The technology involved is largely the same, especially at the level of need that most companies currently have from their web analytics solution. And while people are a good proxy for true process, in my experience too great of a dependence on people can cause two substantial problems:

1. If the people are not the right people, the organization may not realize there is a problem until a great deal of money has been spent and a great deal of time has been wasted
2. In my recent web analytics survey (results coming very soon!) we found that HALF of all respondents having web analytics experience had considered taking a new job in the last six months

So in the absence of process, some companies end up hiring unqualified people, hiring the wrong people, or hiring people who jump ship when the next best offer comes along. Certainly this is not the case with all companies, but until your organization has clear expectations about the goals for your investment in web analytics and how you plan to achieve those goals, technology and people will only get you so far.

I know, I know, I said to hire people and everything would be fine. It will be fine, but with process, you can be better than fine. You can make money. Piles of it.

So if you think your company is not following the 10/20/70 rule, here is my humble recommendation for you to consider:

1. Take whatever technology you have already deployed, until you’re good at web analytics the technology doesn’t really matter
2. Gather your key site stakeholders together
3. Ask them to share their experience and understanding of web analytics thus far
4. Document the gaps, looking for statements like “concerns about data accuracy”, “problems with data collection”, “not getting the right reports”, “reports are not actionable” and “concerns about how effectively we’re using web analytics tools”
5. Pick any typical site process such as launching a new campaign or deploying a new page or micro-site
6. Diagram the process you picked in step #5, highlighting decision points, tasks, and sub-tasks
7. Determine where measurement fits in the diagram you produce
8. Ask yourself if measurement, reporting, and/or analysis always happens in the places you’ve identified
9. If not, ask yourself if the lack of measurement, reporting, and/or analysis results in the stakeholder concerns discovered in step #4
10. If so, add measurement, reporting, and analysis to your diagram and make sure to follow the new diagram/process/checklist every time!

Still on the fence? Here are some questions for you to consider:

1. If you have spent $10 of every $100 on technology, are you successful in getting most of your questions answered?
2. If you answered “yes” to question #1, are you sure you’re asking the right questions?
3. If you’re trying to spend $90 of every $100 on people, how exactly is that going for you?
4. If you answered “great” to question #3, are you sure you’re not paying too much?
5. If you have great technology and great people, what is your web analytics ROI?
6. If you don’t know the answer to question #5, why not?
7. If you have dedicated analysts on your staff, what percentage of their time do they spend generating reports and attending meetings vs. producing analysis and managing experiments?
8. If you answered “too much reporting and meetings” to question #7, why do you think that is?
9. If you have thought about the process of doing web analytics, do you have a checklist or business process diagram for the core processes?
10. If you answered “huh?!” to question #9, call me.

Obviously my clear bias is for companies to invest in the process of doing web analytics. But professionally I have spent a great deal of time looking at this problem from all possible angles. And every time the answer is the same: The companies that invest their time refining how they actually “do” web analytics get more out of their efforts than companies who simply invest their money.

As always I welcome your comments and criticism.

Today in Holland I am announcing Web Analytics Demystified’s partnership with the Belgian firm OX2.
The first partnership we announced, you may recall, is with Aquent–the world’s largest marketing staffing organization–and is designed to let Web Analytics Demystified help companies find, train, and hire web measurement staff while establishing a strategic road map for web analytics success.

But in my experience not all companies wanting to think strategically about web analytics are able to immediately tackle the organizational hurdles associated with hiring staff or managing teams of consultants.  In situations like these, the approach we will take is to bring in business partners who have strong, demonstrated experience providing long-term web analytics consulting.  Our partners will then help implement the shared vision of the client, Web Analytics Demystified, and the partner on an ongoing basis.
In central Europe the team I believed to be best suited to that work was Rene and Aurelie’s team at OX2 (the “Web Analytics Dream Team”.)

Please read the press release and if you have any questions about this announcement please contact me directly.

I am blown away by the coverage of my announcement that I’ve left Visual Sciences to form my own company. I’m so behind on thanking people who have written about the news I wanted to summarize their thoughts and thank everyone en masse.

• E-consultancy in the UK wishes me luck and says that my decision to help companies understand the process of doing web analytics is “bang on” which I’m pretty sure is a compliment. Thanks to Richard Maven for reaching out to me after the press release and I look forward to hopefully meeting the e-consultancy crew when I fly to Europe later this month.
• Gary Angel from SEMphonic is a good friend but I was still humbled by his declaration that my announcement was “the biggest news out of Emetrics” Gary says that “[Eric is] consistently thoughtful. His opinions are rooted in real-world work. And see seems remarkably able to deal with web analytics at every level very successfully: from introducing web analytics to marketers to working hands-on with real analysts to helping senior executives get a handle on web measurement process. When you can do that and not get on the nerves of people like me, you’re doing something pretty special.” Coming from someone I respect as much as Gary this means a huge amount to me.
• The bloggers at FutureNow congratulate me on not being afraid to “ask bigger questions“
• My good friend Judah Phillips (who blogs here at Web Analytics Demystified) says I have achieved self-actualization. Judah also bought me dinner on Tuesday night after I had been celebrating for several hours over vodka drinks so thanks to both Judah and his fiance.
• Jacques Warren, who also recently left the comfort of his day job to become a consultant in Canada and who clearly read the copy on my web site and understands what I’m doing. Jacques comments “Do you realize? This guy is going to make a living telling companies how to organize Web Analytics” to which I can only say, “Yes.”
• Anil Batra, who looks nothing like that lousy little picture of him on his blog, had an inkling of my intentions but was surprised by the timing. Thanks for the encouragement, Anil!
• My good friend René Dechamps Otamendi from Belgium who has a good summary of my business model and who captured an interesting photo of my singing happy birthday to Aurelie Pols (his wife, and a member of my company’s advisory board.) I consider Rene and Aurelie two of the nicest people I know and am excited about the opportunity to work more closely with them in the future.
• Sebastian Wenzel at Web Analytics Book wishes me luck and speculates that I’ll be plenty busy soon.
• Marshall Sponder says he’s listening to me when I give him advice, which is good to hear, since he’s now on a WAA board with $250,000 in cash burning a hole in their pocket. Hey Marshall, you should buy a copy of my book for everyone in the organization. ;-)

Phew. And that’s just what I culled out of my feeds this morning. I sincerely want to thank all of the bloggers I mention here and anyone I forgot. I’m hugely excited about having the freedom to explore other ways I can help the web analytics and broader business community and hope all of you will keep reading this blog and provide feedback as you think I need it.

One of my favorite bloggers, Mr. Avinash Kaushik, offered up his web analytics predictions for 2007 in a recent post. At the end of his post he offered this:

In turn I’ll tag our esteemed world leader Mr. Peterson to offer up his top secret list of 2007 web analytics predictions (I am positive it will be super!).

When Avinash calls me “our esteemed world leader” I have to wonder if he’s drinking stronger egg nog than I am at this time of the year, but since Mr. Kaushik is so nice (and positive it will be super!) here goes:

1. The many smart companies that have invested already in technology and people will increasingly realize that without addressing their Web Analytics Business Process they will still under-appreciate the full value of their investment in web analytics.
2. Smart people will stop freaking out about how “Web 2.0″ is going to be measured and will begin to develop rational and reasonable models for tracking emerging Internet technologies and business models.
3. Those companies who have deployed sufficiently powerful applications to identify search marketing click-fraud, especially those paying for highly-competitive search terms, may not particularly like what they find.
4. Emetrics San Francisco will be widely proclaimed the “best ever” thanks to the combination of an interstellar line-up of speakers and a location that (finally!) says “Go out at night and PARTY!” [ Important: I have no knowledge about the speakers at Emetrics San Francisco, I just really trust Jim Sterne! ]
5. The web analytics analyst community will shake again, although not quite the same way it did when Bob Chatham and I both joined Visual Sciences within a month of each other.

One Bonus:

1. Avinash, hot off the critical success of his new book, will finally accept his “guru” status in our community and stop being so damn humble all the time. Personally, I want to hear Mr. Kaushik say, “Damn straight, I’m the man!” on stage in San Francisco … Who’s with me?

Damn, it took me waaaaaaaaay longer than six minutes to write five not-so-surprising predictions. I guess I didn’t want to limit my career quite as much as my friend Avinash …

Since we’re still playing games, I’m going to go ahead and tag Mr. Gary Angel at SEMphonic, someone who has always cut straight to the chase, and see if he’ll offer up his own web analytics predictions for 2007. Gary?

Thanks to some anonymous poster to my weblog, you can now view my Emetrics presentation on the Web Analytics Business Process over on slideshare or use the following embedded object (how cool!)

[I had to remove the object since it was breaking my site ... sorry!]

I’m nearly done with the annotated version but it’s been slow going because work has been really busy lately. Keep watching this weblog!