We’ll ask any new employee to sign the usual lawyer-ish documents that doesn’t really do much else than state $AMOUNT and #OPTIONS. We need those docs, of course, but what we really need is a pledge to a VR ethos! Therefore every new employee will be requested to SIGN the below pledge – it is the most important part of our agreement and we want new team members to truly commit to it.

*  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *

I will never stop learning. I won’t just work on things that are assigned to me.
I know there’s no such thing as a status quo.

I will build our business sustainably through passionate and loyal customers.
I understand that our customers drive our product, that simplicity and ease of use is paramount.
I’ll help deliver exceptional customer service at all times.

I will never pass up an opportunity to help out a colleague, and I’ll remember the days before I knew everything.
I am more motivated by making an impact than anything else. I will communicate as much as possible, because it’s the oxygen of our team. I am in a marathon, not a sprint, and no matter how far away the goal is, the only way to get there is by putting one foot in front of another every day. Given time and determination, there is no problem that’s insurmountable.

I am committed to making Visual Revenue the “Bloomberg terminal” of the News Room!

I really do care!

*  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *

Thanks to Charlie for coming up with the initial comments around our ethos – and thanks much to Automattic for inspiration to go ahead and do this in the first place!

NOW! (If you agree with the above Pledge) go have a look at some of the Exciting Job Openings.

Cheers :-)
/ Dennis (@dennismortensen)

Also, do check out the accompanying article written by Julian Baldwin over on UNYstartups.

Visual Revenue, Founder and CEO Dennis R. Mortensen (NYC):

Investment to Accelerate Product Development of company’s Predictive Analytics Platform for Media

New York, NY, July 27th, 2011 – Visual Revenue Inc., the market leader in predictive analytics for online media, today announced that it has secured $512K in funding led by Lerer Ventures, SV Angel, Kima Ventures and NYC Seed and joined by 10 individual Angel investors. This investment will primarily help fuel the Company’s product development.

Visual Revenue offers media companies a first-of-its-kind Front Page Decision Support System for online Editors. The solution, which can predict the performance of a piece of content about 15 min. into the future, provides real-time recommendations on what content to place in which position on a Front Page and for how long. Taking these recommendations results in a dramatic increase in visitor engagement, content relevancy and revenue, whilst adding a cost saving opportunity at the same time.

“We’ve seen first-hand the growing importance of data for publishers and jumped at the opportunity to invest in Visual Revenue”, said Eric Hippeau of Lerer Ventures. “In a fast paced newsroom, Editors need recommendations on what content to place where, not more data to interpret. Visual Revenue’s unique ability to talk directly to the Editor is a huge win.”

”Online Editors have access to a lot of data but this typically paints an unclear or misleading picture” said Dennis R. Mortensen, CEO and founder of Visual Revenue. “We are leading the way by providing online Editors with advanced, yet simple, decision support tools they need to take informed, real-time content placement decisions that impact the future.”

“I am extremely happy with the group of investors we’ve brought together and their media industry knowledge. This investment will allow us to accelerate the development of the platform and further expand our offering,” said Mortensen.

Visual Revenue is platform independent and provides real-time recommendations on content placement for a publisher’s web front pages, mobile and tablet editions and their syndicated feeds. Visual Revenue works with all Front Page layouts, requires no change to existing processes and has an extremely lightweight integration methodology.

About Visual Revenue
Visual Revenue Inc. provides a predictive analytics solution that helps online media organizations set a better front page. Headquartered in New York, Visual Revenue is helping media organizations across the globe better place their current content throughout their online publication. Visual Revenue’s Front Page Automation Platform currently provides more than 40 online publishers with real-time recommendations.

Visual Revenue was founded by former IndexTools (now Yahoo! Web Analytics) COO Dennis R. Mortensen and officially launched in January 2011. The founding team are industry veterans from the web analytics, big data and predictive modeling world.

For further information please contact Charlie Holbech, VP Operations, charlie.holbech[at]visualrevenue[dot]com, +1.212.506.6700

PRWeb Press Release: http://www.prweb.com/releases/2011/7/prweb8669917.htm

“My world revolves around online publishers; in particular news media. With that in mind the most important 2011 trend, as I see it, will be greater DATA FOCUS and the desire and willingness to be more data driven. Editors will be looking to use decision support systems and will be moving towards an environment where machine learned and predicted content recommendations are a daily norm. Gut feeling will be a thing of 2010!” – Dennis R. Mortensen

Read the post in full here:
http://www.acquisitionengine.com/digital-marketing-trends-2011/

Cheers :-)
/ d (@dennismortensen)

So come and find me in this December version of “Where’s Waldo?” – I would love to meet up for a nerdy chat about Analytics or Media. Drinks are on me! You are most welcome to connect on Tripit (thus increasing your chance of getting that Mojito)

..
Dec. 01 – New York: Speaking and Socializing at Stratigent YWA Analytics event

Dec. 03 – New York: Speaking about Bootstrapping vs. Venture Funding at ULS

Dec. 07 – Chicago: Speaking on Analytics & Attribution at SES / (my comments)

Dec. 08 – Chicago: SES Authors Book Signings Event (12:00 in the exhibit hall)

Dec. 10 – San Francisco: Customer Meetings
Dec. 10 – Sunnyvale: back to Yahoo! home base

Dec. 11 – Mountain view:  Speaking on Metrics for Success at SDForum
..

Cheers :-)
/ Dennis (@dennismortensen)

You can go to the original post here: http://widgetanalytics.wordpress.com/2009/07/08/the-analytics-food-chain-panel-from-omma-metrics-measurement/

I embedded the video below; for your entertainment:

Panel: Monster, Yahoo!, Razorfish, Hitwise and Neo@Ogilvy.

Cheers :-)
/ Dennis Mortensen (@dennismortensen)

I suggest, as an alternative, that you try using a Page Revenue Participation metric for your next Conversion Optimization routine, as it might reveal opportunities away from your traditional funnel. When debating this, please note that, I am purely talking about Controlled On site Content, as defined by the Online Business Measurement Quadrant.

The reason for brining this up; I only just returned from Boston, where I attended the Internet Retailer conference, and probably even more exciting the Yahoo! Merchant Summit, which was delivered in conjunction with the show (On that note, the ystoreblog folks did a respectable pre-show interview about YWA 9.5 and my book). Anywho; the merchant owners had some of the most honest analytics questions I’ve heard in a long time. You simply cannot wow these folks with a posh looking four-dimensional bubble chart – they wanted to know exactly HOW we are going to help them make more money!!) – Refreshing!

A small disclaimer; all of the below screen-shots are from Yahoo! Web Analytics, but you have the same metric available in e.g. Omniture Site Catalyst and even though Google Analytics have a different term ($ index) and slightly different calculation, it is the same optimization attitude.

So how do I use a Page Revenue Participation metric for my next Conversion Optimization routine ?

1.

Go find your most popular pages report, which in most tools, means a report that shows a sorted list of all your pages, with the one receiving the most page views on top. By most standards, this report does not provide much insight, unless you derive your revenue from page views (such as advertising) – fair enough, then this might not be a bad proxy for $money.

2.

Customize this particular report in a way, so that you get your tools revenue participation metric appended to it. In Yahoo! Web Analytics the Revenue Participation metric resides under the sales group under metrics, when using the Custom Report wizard.

3.

The below figure, shows a standard most popular pages report, which have had the revenue participation metric added to it. This is almost per default, and with out much fingering, a better choice than just looking at raw page view numbers.

4.

Fingering or not! I am a big fan of visualizing data and the below screen shot is essentially just an advert for data visualization (but also, potentially, a  honest report export, that will create better value than a non colored bar chart). The below bar chart was extended to 100 bars and had its bars colored by the revenue participation metric. This alone brings instant insight, as we can spot easily spot “small green bars” – or more precisely, low page view volume combined with high revenue participation (a.k.a. important pages). We could of course expand this with more rows of data or just sift through the bars a hundred at a time.

5.

What I really like for you to do, is to change the sorting from page views to revenue participation. This changes the picture completely and it is the essence of my suggestion for you trying out a Page Revenue Participation metric for your next Conversion Optimization routine. This should in a best case scenario bring forth a set of pages, that you might not see as active drivers for conversion today.

The last X steps in your funnels, which are required for people to check out, will of course always be on top, and if you are anal (like me), I suggest you go filter them away, so you only have pure content in this report. Especially if you have to communicate this beyond yourself or your close team.

The below shows a astonishing set of facts:

• The “About us” Page Touched 23% of revenue in < 1% of visits
• Site Search participates in about 50% of all my revenue.

Knowing these two facts (which will be completely different from site to site) I hope one would set out to work on the “About us” pages AND closely look at those internal site search result pages. For these folks, their business clearly depend on it.

6.

As a closing comment; not that the upper commentary need further input, it is obvious that neither “About us” or “Search” is part of your traditional funnel analysis as below – and as such we sometimes forget to look outside our funnel.

Doing a better “About us” page, in this example, even though it is not part of the funnel, is likely to widen the funnel – and if that is not exciting I don’t know what it.

This is not the first time I talked about revenue participation per say and if you are still listening, the post about how you can Use Web Analytics to determine the width of your Internal Search Query box might be worth a read.

Cheers :-)
/ Dennis Mortensen (@dennismortensen)

• What is the USP of your WA solution?
• From your experience, do you see a difference between the WA market in the US and Europe?
• How do the three supposedly most advanced regions of Europe compare in level of Web Analytics advancement?
• What’s your opinion on Eric Peterson’s suggestion to setup a separate WAA for Europe?
• What will be the next step or hot topic within WA? How do you see the evolution?

I would like to apply part of my response to the last question.

It is fair to believe that some of the next steps / hot topics within the web analytics industry are about the following two shifts:

- A move from web site analytics towards web presence analytics
- A move from data conclusion towards data predictions

FULL Article:
http://activemetrics.wordpress.com/2008/05/28/interview-dennis-r-mortensen/

Cheers :-)
Dennis

If you do not have the time to click through, find my three SEO measurement and optimization tips from the interview below:

SEO Tips:

1.
Optimize towards true company objectives, whether that be Revenue, Profit, Customer Lifetime Value etc. Don’t do the #visit optimization, as that will very likely do more harm than good.

2.
Coordinate your SEO and SEM efforts and look at a combined ROI – as they are highly intertwined.

3.
Optimize beyond your own controlled site content, optimize on uncontrolled off site content as well. Essentially help good customer advocates rank better. This is a dangerous activity, but for those brand and service confident enough, it is a powerful activity.

dennis :-)

Cheers
Dennis