The other day I had the privilege of doing a interview with Jeff Lawrence, President of Sonicko Consulting. It was a lot of fun to do the interview because Jeff had such great questions.
Two of his questions put me in a bit of a quandary (aren’t all good questions supposed to do that?). Question three because it would have me postulate on what I would like to see in Microsoft Gatineau, a tool that is pretty much a done deal from what I know. Question four because well you’ll see.
Here is, if I had a four wishes, my wish-list of what I would love to see in Microsoft’s upcoming web analytics application: Gatineau:
3. What tools, features, and reports would you like to see in the upcoming Microsoft Gatineau product?
Hmm…. I don’t think my friend Ian Thomas has quite the luxury to build whatever I want, but let’s assume he does.
# 1: I hope that with Gatineau Microsoft figures out exactly who their target audience is and then delivers a tool exactly and specifically just for that audience. Being all things to all people means being nothing to anyone.
I guess I am saying I hope their tool does not have a billion standard reports out of the box, just the six that their target audience needs. Atleast initially.
# 2: Efficient segmentation. In four clicks (see I am generous!) anyone should be able to segment out traffic from the search engines or from a top referring url /’s or visitors who see x number of pages or come on a particular campaign (whose id is in the url or cookie).
It is very hard to dumb down the ability to do intelligent segmentation, yet that is the key to finding actionable insights.
# 3: Useful reporting for Search Engine Optimization. I love free traffic and with all the changes (especially at Google, such as increased “personalization”) the PPC gravy train is going to pause. SEO will become more effective at getting the right kinds of traffic yet today most tools pay lip service to the measurement of the results of SEO efforts, all you can do is measure organic traffic and if it goes up (that is hardly a measure of SEO).
I hope Gatineau can atleast tap into the MSN data and providing effective reporting for atleast MSN SEO efforts, it will definitely get a leg up on others if it does even this little bit.
# 4: Ok maybe I will ask for a reporting feature. I hope that all the reports will show one extra time period by default.
For example show eight days in a “weekly” trend and thirteen months in a “yearly” trend. Seems like a small thing but most web analytics tools are not great at giving context, and context is king. If you look at a eight day trend you could compare this Monday to last Monday and get a feeling for if you are doing better or worse this Monday, with most tools you don’t see last Monday. Ditto for this month vs. same month last year.
It gives context to your past performance and is a “internal benchmark” that can frame current performance. Might not scream answers at you but will get you to ask the right “why” and “what” questions.
There is nothing uniquely Microsoft Gatineau about the above three requests, though if they are really starting with a open mind it might be easier for them to consider requests from random bloggers such as myself.
4. Do you foresee a decline in the major players in the web analytics field such as Omniture and WebSideStory based upon free web analytics packages, or do you believe that they fulfill a niche and will remain?
For the answer to this question please read Jeff’s interview, you’ll find a interesting answer and learn a new term: YATR (Yet Another Tsunami of Reports). Curious? Click here.
What do you all think? Is my wish-list a good one? Too simple? Too much?
Do you have your own wish-list of what you would want to see in a web analytics tool (Gatineau or others)? If not a whole list would you care to share your number one wish from any web analytics tool?
Please share your feedback via comments.
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In early January I was using ClickTracks Appetizer (free web analytics tool if your data source is web logs) and gave the feedback to ClickTracks that I wish they provided more reports and features in their free tool. I felt that having access to the Site Overview and other reports would be really helpful to users of the free tool.
Michael Stebbins, VP of Marketing for ClickTracks, gamely agreed (story here) but put for a small condition, that I do a educational seminar for ClickTracks users.
Never the one to refuse a reasonable offer to educate the community, and get free reports for web analytics users in exchange, I agreed to do the seminar. It was a icing on the cake that the seminar is devoid of sales pitches and very much geared towards educating any web analytics practitioner (regardless of what tool they might use).
I hope that all the ClickTracks Appetizer users have been using and enjoying the additional reports that were made available in the tool.
The topic of the seminar is: “Unleash the Power of Web Analytics”.
[Funny side story: I spend just under five years working at Silicon Graphics Inc and at SGI we would “unleash” everything. Unleash the power of computing. Unleash innovation. Unleash the power of marketing. Unleash this and unleash that. Ahhh… those were the days! :)]
Here is the description of the class:
The amount of information that a sophisticated web analytics tool provides can be positively overwhelming! Check out Avinash Kaushik’s tips for simplifying your approach to web analytics. In the class (note: the same topic will be presented both days) Avinash will present tips and tricks on how to avoid a lot of the complexities of web analytics and how to get down to the basics that make a difference. He’ll provide his expert advice on how web analytics can add value to your business; best practices and approaches for your reporting and analysis; and how to leverage segmentation and optimizing for search.
Sounds interesting? You can click here to sign up (it is a free seminar, anyone can attend).
The classes are on Mon Feb 26th 10:00 am PST (1:00 pm EST / 6:00 pm UK) and Tue Feb 27th 7:00 am PST (10:00 am EST / 3:00 pm UK). It is the same class that will be repeated twice, for the benefit of our European friends.
I hope that you can attend, it would be great to present to all of you and answer your questions.
If you have a suggestion for a particular facet or angle you would like me to cover or you have a burning question or simply want me to show a particular report or metric, please send me a email (blog at kaushik dot net) or add a comment to this post.
Ok now off to create the slides for the seminar (that were due back to Dan yesterday!).
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A reader from Tehran, Iran emailed asking for a model by which he could judge how competent his company was at competitive intelligence. Tough question. At the end of this post I’ll share my attempt at a model that you can use to judge at what level your company is operating.
But first I wanted to share a podcast I recently did with Eric Enge from StoneTemple Consulting on the topic of competitive intelligence.
There has been a lot of buzz about competitive intelligence and a lot of interest in conflicting marketing claims. Simon Waldman had an especially delightful post on his blog that is a must read just so you can get a good feel for how hard this stuff is.
It is hard, it is complex but hopefully your find something interesting and actionable in my podcast with Eric.
Podcast Summary: We started by talking about why competitive analysis should be a part of ever web analytics program (now that there are so many free options as well). We covered the top competitive intelligence vendors, the data capture methodologies they use and the strengths of each vendor.
Listen to the Podcast: (41 mins)
Download the Podcast:
Podcast Details: Here are the questions we covered in the podcast:
1. Why do you think we need to do competitive intelligence analysis as a part of web analytics
2. Can you talk a little bit about using Hitwise as an analysis tool?
3. Can you talk a little bit about using ComScore as an analysis tool?
4. Can you talk a little bit about using Alexa as an analysis tool?
5. Are you familiar with Quantcast and Compete? Can you comment on these?
6. You recently posted about some other neat tools. In this post you talked about the Search funnels function from MSN. Can you talk about that a bit?
7. In that same post you also talked about MSN’s keyword / key phrase forecast tool. How does that fit into a businesses web site plan?
8. For a final question, let’s shift gears a bit, because this is one of the most interesting things we’ve discussed. How would you recommend a company get started when they are getting into analytics for the first time?
In my humble opinion each company / Analyst should spend at the minimum 10 – 15% of their time doing competitive analysis because it is the only way you will provide the “ecosystem” context to the data you are getting from your Web Analytics data.
If you are not doing competitive analysis (using any tools above that you prefer) then you are optimizing and measuring success with blinders on. You’ll go straight and make turns etc, but without the benefit of the 360 degrees view (which could have a huge influence your turns and the direction you take).
Competitive Intelligence Competency Judgment Model:
So if you do spend 10% of your time doing competitive analysis how do you figure out what level of competency you are at? There isn’t a standard model you can use, it is still a evolving field. But I would look for these things:
Level Nada:
* You do nothing, you are focussed on your website analytics and that forms all of your reporting and every element on your dashboard. You have unlimited potential for improvement.
* This one’s tricky: You currently only measure conversion rate for your competitor using one of the many tools. This is also level nada because usually there is little actionable insight that comes from this exercise. (For more on this click here.)
Level Three:
* Do you know your share of traffic compared to your competitors?
* Do you know the trend of traffic over the last six to twelve months compared to your competitors?
* What are the organic rankings of the top search keywords for you with respect to your competition?
Level Two:
* Do you know what % of your traffic comes from search engines and what % is it for your competitors?
* What is your share of visitors you get from search engines for your top five non-branded keywords, what what is the share that your competitors are getting?
* What are the top five websites referring traffic to your website and what sites are referring traffic to your competitors?
Level One:
* Are you doing search funnel analysis for your keywords and your competitors keywords?
* What affiliates and banner ads networks work for your competitors successfully? Are you using them? Should you use them?
* Do you know which are the sites that are not your direct competitors but are getting traffic for your non-branded keywords? What is your strategy to deal with them?
You can use the answers to questions in each level in the model above to judge what level you are at. How’s that for simple!
A Recommendation:
Jim Sterne’s Emetrics summits are a premier destination for learning about all things Web Analytics. I have spoken at past Emetrics summits and am a Net Promoter of the events (emetrics DC ‘06 reflections). The next set of conferences are in London, March 29 (Agenda, Speakers) and San Francisco, May 7 (Agenda, Speakers). Jim’s very kindly invited me to speak at both events and I hope to see many of you there.
As always please share your feedback via comments about this post, I would love to get your feedback on the competency model suggested above or anything else for that matter.
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