If you’ve been doing more than just reading my blog, you probably noticed that I massively updated the Web Analytics Demystified web site over the past week. Thanks to Jeff, Judah, and dozens of other kind folk who gently pushed me to build a site that was more reflective of the work I’m doing now.

Aside from an overhaul for the look-and-feel of the site, here are some of the things you may want to check out:

• A substantial overhaul of the Web Analytics Wednesday site including the addition of new sections letting participants share their experience, information about how my company is now sponsoring events around the world, and better navigation tools for folks looking for local events.
• An overhaul of the jobs section of the site, including an updated RSS feed for jobs, job content integrated into site search, better navigation for jobs, and an overall cleaner look.
• The addition of new charting and trending tools to the Vendor Discovery Tool, which I’m really excited about since it makes it much easier to explore market relationships between vendors.
• A much cleaner process for purchasing copies of my books, as well as the ability to purchase copies of Web Site Measurement Hacks and standalone copies of the key performance indicator worksheets that come with The Big Book of Key Performance Indicators.
• An exciting new blog with Joseph Carrabis and (hopefully) a bunch of really bright people from inside the measurement community and out, The Future of Web Analytics, Demystified.
• RSS feeds for all major content areas of the site including research, consulting, jobs, Web Analytics Wednesday, and a universal feed for my, Judah, Daniel, and the all new Future of Web Analytics, Demystified blog.

There is a lot more but it’s probably better if you just come back to the site and have a look rather than my trying to describe it all.

If you find any bugs please don’t hesitate to shoot me an email and let me know. I very much welcome your feedback on the new site and am open to suggestions. I have a handful of initiatives that I’m still working on, including some stuff around Web Analytics Wednesday, but welcome your ideas.

For those of you who missed my presentation yesterday, “Web Analytics: A Day a Month”, you can now listen to the re-recorded webcast at WebEx thanks to Tableau and the American Marketing Association. I say “re-recorded” since once again I managed to bring a large enough crowd to the webcast to break WebEx. Web analytics is hot!

You can listen to the webcast without having to register (still requires name and email) until next week I think by going to:

amaevents.webex.com

Here are a few other things I should mention, as long as I’m writing:

• I’m going to be in Boston next week for Judah’s Web Analytics Wednesday event (rescheduled from last month due to me being a weather-wimp) and if you’re in Boston or nearby I’d love to catch up. Please join us in Cambridge!
• The next few weeks I will be in Chicago (Jan 25th), Seattle (Jan 30th), San Jose (Jan 31st) and New York (Feb 7th) giving the keynote address at OpinionLab’s client conferences. The nice folks at OpinionLab mentioned that they’re opening up the events to non-customers so if you’d like to hear me talk about how quantitative and qualitative data combined provide a much more actionable view of the online visitor, please join us!
• The nice folks at the Direct Marketing Association who gave away PDF copies of my book Web Analytics Demystified in exchange for participation in their web analytics survey (written up by the amazing W. David Rhee) are holding a webinar on the research findings on Januay 23rd. The event is not free but the research is pretty good and if you’re in the DMA you should consider joining the call.
• The nice folks at the Web Analytics Association are also holding a research call, tomorrow (Jan 17th) in fact, on the future of the web analytics industry. I think this event is free but it might only be free to WAA members (maybe if Richard or Andrea read this they can comment for all to see!) The call is tomorrow morning at 9 AM Pacific, noon Eastern and you can register to attend at the WAA web site.
• Anil Batra has apparently jumped on the “bounce rate” bandwagon and is having a “bounce rate survey” that he’d like you to participate in. I haven’t had a chance to take it yet but I really enjoyed Anil’s salary research so I’m sure he’ll do a great job with bounce rate too!
• I’ll be back in San Diego in late February at Aaron Kahlow’s Online Marketing Summit talking about Key Performance Indicators in a Web 2.0 World.  I really enjoyed OMS last year and am looking forward to getting back to Sea World Aaron’s event!
• I had nothing to do with that movie on web analytics, despite it being filmed here in the Rose City, and have no idea what Ian is talking about.  Ian should spend less time at the movies and more time reading what experienced practitioners are saying about Gatineau.  <grin>

If I’m forgetting anything please comment below.  I think you’ll really like the webcast — the feedback I got has been excellent so far (despite some people going gossipy about the title of my last post on the subject … cage match indeed!)

Happy Holidays to everyone reading this blog! I hope that all of you had as relaxing and enjoyable a holiday season as we did here at the Peterson house. But now that the holidays are behind us it’s time to put the Wii controller down (thank goodness!) and get back to work — and what better way to start the year than with a free webcast!

I routinely get email from people new to audience measurement who are looking for guidance regarding setting up a successful web analytics program in their organization. They relate all kinds of interesting anecdotes like “I heard web analytics was easy but we’re not getting anywhere fast” and “we heard that bounce rate is this amazing, wonderful metric but it just doesn’t seem as useful as people say.” I do my best over email to help point them in the right direction but there are only so many hours in the day, especially since I have a small business to run, research results to publish, and an entire community to participate in.

Thankfully the American Marketing Association and Tableau Software are generously sponsoring a Web Analytics Demystified webcast describing our recommended quarter-by-quarter, month-over-month program for building a world-class web analytics program. Because web analytics is hard, it is my belief that rather than try to “boil the ocean” it pays to have a strategic roadmap with a reasonable but aggressive pace. It will certainly take you more than an hour a day to be successful with web analytics, but over the course of a year any company can develop the necessary competencies to create brilliant, amazing, and magnificent success.

In the webcast—which is on Tuesday, January 15th at 1:00 PM Eastern Time by the way—I will be giving a year’s worth of guidance covering topics like:

• Building dashboards, reports, and analysis that give you the facts for better decisions
• Setting up a “Web Analytics 2.0” measurement environment
• Sifting through mountains of website data to quickly find what matters most
• Allocating staff and resources for maximum benefit
• Reconciling different sources of data
• Selecting vendors and improving vendor relationships

You can register for this free webcast at the American Marketing Association web site:

http://www.marketingpower.com/webcast435.php

I hope before all of you get too busy in 2008 you’ll take the time to join the AMA, Tableau, and I on January 15th!

I’ve been talking about the web analytics job market and the need for dedicated professionals managing web analytics and caring for your company’s investment. To be honest, when I first explicitly told the market to hire dedicated staff back in late 2004, even I didn’t clearly imagine that just three years later there would be over 1,750 open positions citing the need for experience with web analytics around the world.

Despite the Web Analytics Association actively helping to develop talent via the University of British Columbia and more recently University of California Irvine, and while all indicators are that these classes are excellent, it will likely be some time before the work of the WAA is felt in the marketplace. And while I don’t have the resources of the Web Analytics Association, I have been working to connect experienced web analytics practitioners with good jobs through the Web Analytics Demystified job board.

Since I deployed the job board we’ve had nearly 100 companies advertise on the board. More importantly, we’ve served way over 25,000 job impressions and helped many of our customers find the right employee for the job. My favorite story is still Musician’s Friend who we helped save tens of thousands of dollars in recruiters fees and relocation expenses by connecting them directly with a long-time reader of my blog who lived in Ashland, Oregon and had simply not seen the job posting.

Talk about a niche audience …

Now that I’ve founded my own company, I’m happy to report that my wife and business partner Amity has taken over responsibility for the job board. Her first decision was to implement package pricing to make it easier for companies looking to hire multiple web analytics resources. We’re now offering three- and five-job packages as well as custom pricing for recruiters and staffing agencies who expect to have multiple openings over time. If you’re interested in learning more about the job board or the new pricing packages, please feel free to reach out to Amity directly.

In some strange way I wish I could just wave my hands and say “never mind, you don’t need bright folks to run this software … the software is great and it will provide all the answers you’re looking for if you just read the documentation” but we all know I cannot. Web analytics is hard, and it takes smart people to make it work. Technology, people, and process in appropriate servings is the recipe for success.

Twice a year Web Analytics Demystified conducts a survey of the practitioner, vendor, and consultant landscape in an attempt to answer critical questions about web analytics. This week we have our Fall 2007 survey out in the field, and I would personally love it if you would take 15 minutes and participate!

Take the Web Analytics Demystified Fall 2007 Survey Right Now!

This particular survey is focusing on web analytics tools and will examine their distribution of deployment and overall customer satisfaction with the tools and the vendors who supply them. The survey is completely anonymous, and if you have any questions about the survey, please email them to me directly.

As a small token of thanks for your participation, everyone who completes the survey will be given a discount code to purchase The Big Book of Key Performance Indicators for over 50% off the cover price (a savings of $10.00!) Additionally, all of the resulting research will be made freely available through this web site (you can download research from our Spring 2007 survey here.)