Report from the 2006 eMetrics Summit
By Jennifer Veesenmeyer, April 2006
Web analytics is an exploding industry and that couldn’t be more apparent than at the 2006 eMetrics Summit. Organized by Jim Sterne, president of the Web Analytics Association, the event sold out two months prior, so the attendee list primarily consisted of Web analytics “zealots” who were savvy enough to register early.
Of more than 200 attendees, two-thirds were CEOs and in-house Web analysts, while the rest were mostly Web analytics consultants. Here are the top ten things that industry thought leaders were talking about at the conference:
(1) The Role Of The Web Analyst Has Evolved –
A Web analyst needs to do more than just measure, analyze and report a company’s key performance indicators (KPIs). A professional Web analyst must also help stakeholders ask good questions and then effectively communicate the answers to them so they can make smart business decisions. They have a responsibility to adapt reports and analyses to the way individual stakeholders want to receive them. Web analysts don’t run reports; they provide business intelligence and there are no one-size-fits-all solutions.
(2) Web Analytics Is Being Used In New Ways –
A number of companies at the conference were interested in using Web analytics tools to monitor employee usage of their Intranets and certain Web based applications. Measuring internal-facing applications has some similarities to measuring external ones, but there are also additional challenges such as integration with Microsoft SharePoint, Lotus Notes, etc.
(3) Our Ability To Measure Far Exceeds Our Ability To Make The Data Actionable –
The conversation has shifted from what can be measured to what should be measured. The data drought is over and most companies are drowning in data. To prevent “analysis paralysis,” focus on identifying a handful of metrics that are actionable. The general consensus was that nothing good comes from measuring something that can’t be changed.
(4) Data Integration Isn’t Getting Any Easier –
Integrating data from multiple sources such as Web analytics, legacy systems, CRM, inventory, call centers, financial, offline sales, etc. continues to be a huge issue for every conference attendee. The previous best practice was to get your data in a single source file. However, companies have seen disappointing results from costly efforts to export everything into huge data warehouses, so the trend is to keep the data in their separate systems and only import limited fields of data as needed. Integrating Web analytics tool with Salesforce.com system was a common issue.
(5) Web Analytics And User Experience Go Hand In Hand –
Traditional Web analytics can show us what visitors are doing on the site, but not why. Even the most basic Web analytics tool can report the bounce rate of home page, but measuring the user experience is critical to understanding what changes need to be made to reduce that number.
(6) Advanced Visitor Segmentation Can Provide Valuable Insight –
It’s one thing to track new versus returning visitors and it is quite another to understand how those visitor segments behave on the site. The first metric is important, but the latter metric is actionable. The more you know about the behavioral differences between visitor segments, the better able you will be to adjust your site in ways that will influence that behavior.
(7) Online Privacy Is The Bane Of The Web Analytics Industry –
Our ability to collect personally identifiable information about Internet users has significantly outpaced the laws protecting consumer privacy. Fearing governmental regulation on the scale of Sarbanes-Oxley, there were some initial discussions around how the Web Analytics Association could proactively address data privacy and the ethical issues surrounding visitor data collection.
At the same time, it was also clear that many companies find data privacy issues to be overwhelming, so they aren’t proactively addressing their own vulnerabilities. The bottom line is that although everyone agrees that online privacy is an important issue, there didn’t appear to be much momentum for addressing it at the
industry level.
(8) Loyalty Programs Are The Easiest Way To Connect Online and Offline Activity –
Unless you have a loyalty program, the common wisdom for attributing offline sales to online lead generation is to do a small pilot rather than attempt comprehensive tracking. Measure if an increase in activity on the web site with regard to a particular product coincides with an increase in sales for that product, then extrapolate from those results.
(9) Interactive Experiences On A Web Site Can Be Measured (But Not Easily) –
The cutting edge for technical implementation of analytics is tracking Rich Internet Applications (RIA) such as interactive Flash, Flex, AJAX and XAML. Examples of popular sites using these technologies include Google gMail, Google Maps, Yahoo Flickr and the Gap Web site.
The two challenges are to capture user behavior such as scrolling, panning, playing/pausing/rewinding a video, etc. and then to report that information in a way that can be understood. Unfortunately, this is so cutting edge that it is extremely complicated (and thus, expensive) to do, so it will probably be at least a year before even savvy Web analytics gurus attempt it.
(10) Experienced Web Analysts Are In High Demand –
A common thread throughout the conference was the severe shortage of people with Web analytics experience. A search on a popular job search site for “web analytics” returned more than a thousand open positions. The advice was that if you couldn’t find someone with Web analytics experience, the next best choice would be someone with extensive direct marketing experience.
It was also interesting to find out what attendees were not talking about at the conference. Formerly considered “hot topics,” there were two notable absences:
(1) Data Quality Is A Dead Horse
The importance of data accuracy should not be downplayed, but there is general agreement that there is a point at which data quality is good enough. It’s better to measure something consistently than it is to continue improving the accuracy of the data. If you’re always measuring the same thing in the same way you will be able to see trends, even if your data isn’t clean.
(2) Log File Analysis or Cookies? Same Difference
The raging debate over whether it is better to use log files or cookies may still be going on in some circles, but it has largely died down among industry leaders. Much to the chagrin of Web analytics vendors, there was a also general feeling among attendees that the top analytics tools are all pretty much the same. Attendees looking to switch tools were looking for improved customer support rather than for additional features. Going forward, support services are likely to be better differentiators for Web analytics tools than features.
The biggest take away from the conference may have been to start small. Don’t strive for perfection and don’t let yourself get overwhelmed by everything that can be done (or even everything that you think should be done). General Web site information and metrics are interesting, but “Aha! Moments” seem to come when looking at a controlled sliver of data.
Test a little. Learn a lot. Apply it.
To learn more about our clients' marketing successes, read our case studies. Or contact us.
