Podcast: Web Analytics in Europe (A conversation with six experts)

I recently had the pleasure of participating in a Podcast, arranged by my de-facto EU WAA representative; Lars Johansson, with the following experts on the subject: Web Analytics In Europe. The tone of the conversation is very relaxed and it was actually tremendously fun to participate - as it was more 7 guys (and girl) chatting about, a for us remarkable subject/.

• Lars Johansson, Sweden (moderator)
• Steve Jackson, Satama, Finland
• Dennis R. Mortensen, IndexTools, Hungary
• Neil Mason, Applied Insights, UK
• Oliver Schiffers, United Internet Media, Germany
• Aurélie Pols, OX2, Belgium
• Marc Sårde, Creuna, Denmark
  

DOWNLOAD/PLAY: European Podcast 1
File Size: 29.6 MB, Duration: 75 minutes

Link to the original post over at Lars’s blog:
Podcast: Web Analytics in Europe (A Conversation With Six Experts)

Enjoy!

10 Cool things you can do with Web Analytics

I had the pleasure of being invited to sit down with Eric Enge from StoneTemple, as part of their 2007 Web Analytics shoot out, talking about 10 cool things you could do with the IndexTools Analytics tool package. As I understand it, he will do a couple of other articles in this “series” – so that you get to hear about NetInsight, HBX and Clicktracks as well. But here are the two articles Eric have done so far:

• 10 Cool Things you can do with IndexTools
• 10 Cool Things you can do with Google Analytics

...And staying on the fun subject, Adam from Mashable had an entertaining article this Monday about: 50+ Ways to Track Website Traffic – that you should scroll through just for the fun of it. Even though I personally do not think that there is no more than some 10ish Web Analytics Vendors out there - and 5 of them are listed above :-)

Disrupting Web Analytics

I was recently quoted over at the Alarm Clock (inside new technology ventures) – and I absolutely love their blog post title of “Disrupting Web Analytics From Budapest” – there is NO DOUBT that I am going to “steal” that phrase and re-use it over and over and over till Omniture or one of the other “big four” send a check - to make me quiet.. and that just for a while :-)

Another great (for ME) quote was their comment on our official press releases: “Accompanied by the ballsy move of listing four of its competitors, Webtrends, WebSideStory, Omniture and CoreMetrics, in all its press releases”

For a second there, I felt just like Janus and Niklas! Ha ha..

Do you have a “Fat head”? (Long tail)

As a reply to my post about how to spot a drooping tail and thus create an opportunity to increase revenue, I had a great question from Greg, which I simply had to answer as part of a separate post. The question goes like this:

Q. “I don't think we have a drooping tail (organic keywords dataset). It seems like we have the opposite! Is there any meaning from such a chart?”



This is a fantastic question that I actually cannot give a direct answer to. There is not much reliable literature available in regards to the proposed “Fat Head” – where on the other hand, there is a very well documented set of theories about the “Fat Tail” – which I would like to go into detail about later (from a “Making more money” point of view).

That said, we (as in me on Greg’s behalf) could assume that there is an “artificially” increased demand for those 4 or 5 outliners in his dataset that represents the “Fat Head” due to specific circumstances (aggressive SEO optimization on those words in particular, etc.)

On the contrary, the essential question is whether the form of the function in the middle part of the head, in the first place, can give any reliable estimation about the behaviour of the head itself. This reliability question cannot be answered by assessing this individual case; it requires the careful evaluation of various diverse cases.

Finally we should remember that there are some fundamental limitations using Zipf's law as the “truth” for all given business models. You even see some uses of the long tail theory deliberately delete head and tail outliners.

So to conclude: Looking at the above data, I think we have a near perfect distribution and that we do definitely not have a drooping tail and the “Fat Head” is most likely “just” an effect of artificially increased demand for 4 or 5 keywords.

Cheers and thank you very much for a great question like this!

N.B.

I am very open to other interpretations of the indicated Fat head, so you are more than welcome to email or comment critically on this. :-)

Cookies and their effect on the "Unique Visitors" metric

There was a debate some months back on the Yahoo Web Analytics Forum about “Authenticated User IDs vs. Unique Visitors” – which I somehow participated in with the post: Visits vs. Unique Visitors vs. Authenticated Users. Here I momentarily touch the subject of why cookie’s affect unique visitors, but not really any conclusion or take on my attitude on the metric as a whole.

I think we can all agree on the definition of a “Unique Visitor” being:

“The number of inferred individual people (filtered for spiders and robots), within a designated reporting timeframe, with activity consisting of one or more visits to a site. Each individual is counted only once in the unique visitor measure for the reporting period”

I also think we can agree that the deletion of cookies, whether 1st party or 3rd party, will cause the unique visitors metric to be inflated (comparing that to the actual number of people visiting your web property). We, the Web Analytics Industry, do know for a fact that this cookie deletion affect the measurement of the Unique Visitors metric. So:


Facts are:

• It’s important for clients to fully understand that this is an industry wide challenge that goes beyond just the Web Analytics industry. It is an Online Marketing challenge affecting Testing, Ad-Serving, Campaign Management, Behavioural targeting and other services who want to identity users.
• It’s also important to understand that it is not only the online marketing service industry that is affected – but the actual clients themselves, with all their needs for registering users and having them logged in on their web properties.
• The challenge is not new and we and the industry have talked about this for years – so one should not be shocked by the any such news.
• The Visit metric is still valid and many industry alumni (like Matt Belkin from Omniture) have talked about using this above “Unique visitors” for a long time.
• The Member ID metric is still valid and probably more important than ever – making sure clients deploy this should be pushed more from the industry.
• The inflated “Unique Visitor” metric is highly region and site specific and the stated fact about unique visitors are likely to be exaggerating the size of the site’s audience by a factor as high as 2.5, or an overstatement of 150% should be taken with a grain of salt.
• Finally one should know that a competing business to “cookie tracking” (the business we are in as WA vendors) is “panel based tracking” (the business comScore is in – this not saying their studies are not valid, just that it should be looked at carefully and probably not pushed as frightening as it is.

My take is:

• Focus more on the visit metric when possible
• As always - accept the fact that the numbers might not be 100% accurate and focus more on trends
• Create some kind of baseline for your own web property that can be used when looking at Unique- and Returning Visitors Metrics (remember this also impacts campaign management and the ability to attribute to a Original Source, which then affects CPA and so on).

I would like to drive your attention to the definition by the Web Analytics Association Web Analytics “Big Three” Definitions - by Jason Burby.

Web Reporting vs. Web Analysis

I believe very strongly that one have to understand that reporting on any metric at pure face value within a very limited context is unsound and should not be confused with actionable insight from analysis! – To wrap up that statement I tend to conclude that:

• Reporting is produced by tools
• Analysis is done by people
• Processes are deployed by organisations

Which leads us to following daring fact:

The right tools +
The right people +
The right processes +
= Data Driven Organisation

Watch my presentation on the matter and find out (or at least watch my take on it) how you tell the difference between reporting and analysis.



Download the PDF here: IndexTools-Dennis-Reporting-vs-Analytics.pdf
... OR ask me to do a presentation on the subject for your organisation. :-)

The conclusion is worth repeating - analysis is all about:

• Developing KPI’s
• Creating Insight
• Taking action

I would like to recommend the following great and in depth posts about the subject:

• Seven Steps to Creating a Data Driven Decision Making Culture (by: Avinash)
• Reporting versus Analysis: The “Actionable” Debate (by: Jim Novo)

It does not get any better than that!

Digital Marketing Event 2007 (DME) – Amsterdam

I just returned from another trip to Amsterdam, this time participating and exhibiting at the event: Digital Marketing Event 2007 (DME) - and I must say that I am once again stunned by the level of local knowledge!

I was speaking both days on the subject:

“Web Reporting vs. Web Analysis - Getting to understand that reporting on any metric at pure face value within a very limited context is unsound and should not be confused with actionable insight from analysis”.

But more about this in another post.

Tv4b interviewed me as well. It’s actually more like an infomercial when I see it again.. ha ha. But do go have a look :-)

Link: http://www.tv4b.com/index.php?page=watch&f_videoid=253
Length: 4.07 min.

N.B.
I think the VIDEO is only live and streamable for a week - so do let me know if it does not work anymore!

Webanalytics Congres in Zeist (The Netherlands)

I attended the Webanalytics Congres in Zeist (The Netherlands) last Thursday and must say that I am absolutely stunned to see this many practitioners attending the event. The Networking was equally great, getting the chance to say hi to:

• Steven Kraal - Leads2Business
• Aurélie Pols and René Dechamps (what happened to Siegert?) - OX2
• Fulton Yancy - Visual Sciences
• Eric Peterson - WebAnalyticsDemystified
• Eelco van Kuik - Conversion Company
• Joris Verwater - Compare Group
• Neil Morgan and my new Danish friend - Omniture
• Minouk Fieggen - Kieskeurig
• Frans Appels - Netprofiler
• ...and all those I forgot :-)

And I do not even live there. GREAT event!

What happend to NedStat? - I tried to find a “representative” the whole day without luck? - Are they out of business? :-)

Wolter Tjeenk Willink from Traffic Builders – I tried to find you?, but I assume I will see you at DME.

Check out these really really good posts about the event from:

• Aurélie Pols (OX2): WebAnalytics Congres Netherlands.
• Eric Peterson (WebAnalyticsDemystified): Web analytics in Holland.

I will be attending the Digital Marketing Event in Amsterdam these days - so I guess I will see you again tomorrow.. :-)

Interview with Dennis R. Mortensen, COO of IndexTools – by Lars

Lars is somehow the de-facto European president of the WAA – or at least the one European WAA voice I hear the most :-) .. nevertheless; he has done some tremendous work in setting up Web Analytics Wednesdays in Stockholm (I attended a Web Analytics Wednesday in Stockholm – which had a whooping 70 something attendees)

I did an interview over at his blog the other day and you can find it here:
Interview with Dennis R. Mortensen, COO of IndexTools

About the following subjects:

• What makes IndexTools unique?
• Do you think the new release of Google Analytics increases your need to be innovative? If so, how?
• What share of your clients are located in Europe?
• If IndexTools didn’t exist, which tool would you use and why?
• What is your biggest challenge in 2007 and how will you overcome it?

And I think I conclude it perfectly and to an absolute A – answering: “Finally, we are really a bunch of exceptionally nice people” – I love the fact that we do not have five full time communication "experts" on board, that would delete comments like that... ha ha.