Measuring Facebook Fan Pages & Apps

The popularity of Facebook is growing. With 400 million users spending an average of almost an hour per day on the site, marketers are clamoring to invest in advertisements, Facebook Fan pages, custom applications, contests and more.

However, the analytics capability of for Facebook is pretty limited. So marketers spending all this money on facebook have very little insight into how their fan pages are performing.
Earlier this week I saw a tweet (message on twitter) with a link to Google Analytics hack for measuring facebook fan pages. We tried this hack but it had too many bugs and after wasting 2 hours we gave up on that solution.

As we were struggling with the GA hack, I got an email from Webtrends announcing their Facebook Measurement Capability. So I guess that is going to be our solution for measuring Facebook fan pages and custom apps but I will have to wait and see if it will live up to the expectations.

Here are some screenshots of Webtrends Facebook measurement reports

Here is a press release from WebTrends

“The ability to have concrete measurement on investments within Facebook and compare them apples to apples with other digital channels is critical to marketers,” said Jascha Kaykas-Wolff, vice president of marketing, Webtrends. “Our comprehensive approach to measuring Facebook, beyond just applications, allows marketers to understand the broader picture of how their Facebook investment is performing.”

Webtrends can now show you how your tabs, apps, and share features are working.
A few examples are:

• Twitter activity driving to Facebook Fan pages
• Facebook Fan page activity overlaid with corporate blog posts
• Conversion performance if they happen in Facebook
• Custom applications, Facebook page tabs, and Facebook ad click performance

Webtrends believes Facebook is one of the key social channels for brands to invest in and these capabilities will help them validate those investments.

Webtrends Analytics for Facebook
Webtrends’ new Facebook measurement capabilities utilize Webtrends Analytics 9, which combines our powerful real-time analytics engine with its best-in-class user interface. For the first time, marketers can view their Facebook measurement alongside other digital marketing investments such as websites, microsites, blogs, mobile apps, and more. Additionally, using Analytics 9’s RSS overlay capabilities, marketers can easily see the impact of promotional efforts. Tracking custom tabs, applications, and sharing provides the most complete measurement of Facebook available in the market.

How Webtrends Analytics Collects Data on Custom Tabs
Custom tabs and applications have critical differences for data collection, due to Facebook’s Terms of Service and its commitment to user privacy.

• Brands can’t use traditional analytics methods for tracking custom tabs because Facebook does not allow Javascript, and they aggressively cache images.
• To overcome these limitations, Webtrends developed a new method that uses their data collection API to bring Facebook data into Webtrends Analytics.
• In addition to tracking tab views, Webtrends can also measure:
• Tab views segmented by fans and non-fans
• Clicks on buttons and links, such as the Share button and its options

How Webtrends Analytics Collects Data on Facebook Applications

• Applications allow more tracking options both because they allow Javascript and because the Facebook’s Terms of Service allows for collection of user level data.
• Webtrends utilizes their Data Collection API to bring Facebook data into Webtrends Analytics.
• Webtrends can measure any type of application built on the Facebook platform.

The Great Data Giveaway – A Demonstration of Webtrends’ Facebook Measurement Capabilities
To demonstrate their new capabilities, Webtrends created a prototype Facebook campaign called The Great Data Giveaway. Webtrends is using this campaign as a model for their customers’ reference.

“Marketers are wrestling with how to earn and prove ROI from social media marketing,” said Kaykas-Wolff. “We designed The Great Data Giveaway to not only demonstrate our new capabilities in action, but to also show marketers that social channels like Facebook can generate qualified leads.”

The campaign is a drawing for prizes that appeal to Webtrends’ target market, which are data prizes like ReadWriteWeb premium reports and InfoChimps’ Twitter Census Data.

1. Webtrends created an application and placed it on a custom tab on Facebook to explain the contest details. KPIs: views segmented by fans and non-fans.
2. The user becomes a fan first (known as a “fan-gate”), then allows the installation of the app in compliance with Facebook’s Terms of Service. KPIs: Rate of fan interest, number of installs.
3. Once the app is installed, the user can enter the contest via a form driven by our Eloqua marketing automation system. KPIs: Entries, follow-up email opens, follow-up email conversions.
4. The app allows users to post the contest info to their wall. KPIs: Number of shares.
5. Webtrends marketing provides air-cover for the contest by mentioning it on Twitter and in blogs. KPIs: RSS overlay of promotion efforts on views (tab) and visits (application).

“We are so proactive in talking about Facebook measurement because it’s a critical area of growth for our customers. The new capabilities we have developed were shown at our recent user conference, Engage 2010, earlier this month, and we have several implementations underway,” said Kaykas-Wolff. “To meet their needs and keep up with the rate of change in this space, we have a series of capabilities we’re adding to Webtrends Analytics that will be released in the near term and ongoing basis.”

Webtrends Analytics 9 for Facebook Webinar
Webtrends will also host a Webinar in April discussing how companies can take advantage of Facebook measurement in Webtrends Analytics 9. For more information including registration, date and time, please visit us here.

If you are interested in seeing more about how you can measure Facebook in Webtrends Analytics, please visit our solutions page here

Conversation with Barry Parshall, VP of Product Strategy, WebTrends

Continuing my series of conversation with Webtrends executives at Engage conference here is my conversation with Barry Parshall, VP of Product Strategy at WebTrends




Also check out

• Conversation with Alex Yoder, CEO of Webtrends


• Conversation with Jascha Kaykas-Wolff, VP of Marketing Webtrends


• Conversation with Casey Carey, VP of Products, WebTrends

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Conversation with Casey Carey, VP of Products Webtrends

Continuing my series of conversation with Webtrends executives at Engage conference here is my conversation with Casey Carey, VP of Products at WebTrends



Also check out my

• Conversation with Alex Yoder, CEO of Webtrends


• Conversation with Jascha Kaykas-Wolff, VP of Marketing Webtrends

Conversation with Jascha Kaykas-Wolff, VP of Marketing WebTrends

Conversation with Jascha Kaykas-Wolff, VP of Marketing WebTrends
I did a series of interviews with Webtrends executives at WebTrends Enagage conference earlier this month.

Here is a message from Jascha Kaykas-Wolff, VP of Marketing WebTrends for all those who could not attend Webtrends Engage Conference.




Also check out my conversation with Alex Yoder, CEO of Webtrends.

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My Conversation with WebTrends CEO Alex Yoder at Engage Conference

I had an opportunity to sit down with Alex Yoder yesterday and this morning to discuss where WebTrends is heading, the future of web analytics and what do we need to do to make Web Analytics industry successful. (Both of us are running for the Web Analytics Association board and if you have not voted yet then please do vote for both of us. Yes you can vote for both of us. I am supporting his nomination.)

Below is the video of my conversation with him this morning, this conversation was focused around his main message in his keynote speech. This video is for all those who could not attend the conference. I have also interviewed several other executives from WebTrends, those videos will be available soon.



Have a question for Alex? Post it here or ask him on twitter at @yodera.

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I am running for the WAA Board of Directors position and will appreciate your support and vote. To learn why you should vote for me please view my details at WAA Site. If you have any questions please feel to email me at batraonline@gmail.com.
Site: AnilBatra.comTwitter: http://www.twitter.com/anilbatra

Should You be Freaking Out about your Analytics? Tracking the Spikes and Dips.

This Blog Post is written by Aaron Lovelace. Aaron is an Analytics and Optimization Analyst on my team and he will be guest blogging on this blog.
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One of the challenges in web analytics is knowing whether a spike or dip in web metrics is something to be worried about. One common way that we deal with knowing whether to ‘freak out’ or not is to conduct a historical baseline analysis. Now, if you are a WebTrends customer, there is an easier and less time consuming way. But first, let me explain how we normally go about it so that you can fully appreciate the new development.

For any given site, our team typically maps out historical trends and create a set of standard metrics to measure against. We call this process a "baseline analysis." These baseline metrics can then be used to determine whether what we are seeing in our analytics is normal or not.

If you do this type of baseline analysis on your site and you notice that your metrics are abnormally good, you can turn whatever caused the spike into a best practice. If your metrics are unusually bad, try to avoid whatever caused the problem in the future. Easy enough, right? Well, sort of.

It is easy to see that conducting this type of research is a necessity if you are serious about success, but that doesn’t change the fact that it is a time consuming and laborious process. If you hire a consultant to do a baseline analysis for you, it could get expensive.

So here is the good news— there is a now faster and more accurate way to track spikes and dips in WebTrends… and to know if you should freak out about them.

WebTrends recently announced a new service (through a partnership with Technology Leaders) called “Dynamic Alert.” Among other things, Dynamic Alert allows you to track spikes and dips that deviate from your website’s historical norms automatically.

It should be noted that SiteCatalyst has a feature called simply "Alerts" which allows you to be notified if your metrics exceed a pre-set metric that you specify. With Alerts, you still need to do a manual baseline analysis to figure out which number(s) to enter in the Alerts configuration.

This is what is so great about the new WebTrends tool—you don’t need to pick a number, it just does it for you by automatically analyzing your historical data. One feature I would like to see, however, is the ability to integrate with other analytics tools beyond WebTrends.

Keep an eye out for more information from WebTrends and Technology Leaders about this useful new tool. Although Dynamic Alerts was developed by a partner, if you sign-up through WebTrends, your bill for this service will just be added to your regular WebTrends bill.

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WebTrends Appoints New CEO

Management shakeup at Webtrends continues. The shakeup started last year when Greg Drew left Webtrends. After Greg, Webtrends appointed Bruce Coleman as the interim CEO, till it found Dan Stikler as the new CEO of the company. Today Webtrends announced the departure of Dan and appointment of Alex Yoder as the new CEO.

Here is the press release from WebTrends:

The Board of Directors of WebTrends Inc. today announced the immediate appointment of Alex Yoder as the company's new president and chief executive officer following the resignation of Dan Stickel. Yoder was also appointed to the company's Board of Directors.

In naming Yoder as CEO, the board turned to a WebTrends insider with seven years of experience at the company, and who most recently led WebTrends to its most successful quarter in history as its vice president of sales. He also has been one of the key executives leading the company's long-term strategic planning, and has over 20 years of global business experience.

Commenting on the management change, board member Neil Garfinkel of Francisco Partners said: "Alex has a proven track record and has demonstrated clear leadership at the company over the years, helping to form our strategic vision and drive customer success. He’s the right person to lead WebTrends’ business forward.”

Yoder joined WebTrends in 2000 and has served in various management capacities in the sales organization. From 2007-2008, Yoder was the vice president of sales at Touch Clarity, a behavioral targeting company, before leaving to rejoin WebTrends as vice president of sales.

"I've spent seven of the last eight years focused on expanding the WebTrends brand and delivering business value to our customers,” said Yoder. “I'm excited to partner with other WebTrends leaders such as Nick Sharp, vice president and general manager WebTrends EMEA, to achieve our next phase of growth and become the clear worldwide leader in marketing optimization solutions. We will achieve this with an unwavering commitment to product innovation, by delivering valuable and compelling solutions to our customers and by building strong relationships with our partners."

WebTrends recently announced its highest revenue quarter in the company’s history, and tomorrow will unveil its new search engine marketing optimization solution—WebTrends Ad Director™.

My best wishes are with Alex and team and I hope that now Webtrends will be able to find the stability and growth that is long overdue.

Web Analytics Buyer’s Guide, Assessing Vendors’ Competencies and Value

John Lovett from Jupiter Research released his new report titled Web Analytics Buyer’s Guide, Assessing Vendors’ Competencies and Value. In this report he analyzed the web analytics market and various vendors, and concluded:

The Web analytics feature race is largely over and we are left with Web Analytics providers competing on Price and Flexibility.

John provides great analysis and insights in this report but I do not fully agree with his conclusion that feature race is largely over. I believe that as new trends in web continue to emerge so is the need for new features. As Phil Kemelor, another great analyst, writes that audio and video are becoming an important part of the web, so there are clearly features needed to support their tracking. Other features currently missing are for Mobile Analytics. Mobile web is clearly gaining momentum and so is a need for Mobile Analytics. I am sure Product Managers of these tool providers are not ready to quit yet.

I do agree that most of the vendors are mostly competing on Price and Flexibility (post-data-capture segmentation, reporting on custom data elements etc.) at this time. (In my view, flexibility is also a feature though). However competing on price when there is still a lot of room for innovation and differentiation is a very myopic view by current web analytics vendor and will provide a way for someone to disrupt their business very quickly.

Satisfaction with the current tool

One of the surprising results in this report was that more than 69% of the web analytics clients have decided to stay with their current web analytics tool. This is a big change from the trend that we have seen in past. A lot of this has to do with education about web analytics tools, what they can do, how they operate and the fact that several most used features and reports are comparable in various tools.
72% of those 69% where completely satisfied with their current provider.
47% of the customer said that the biggest challenge they were trying to solve with Web Analytics tools was Vistor Segmentation. 47% also said that customer engagement was their biggest challenge.

And the Winner Is?

This report has a great 3 dimensional chart showing how different tool vendors rate in terms of business value, market suitability and breadth of company.
Omniture, Unica, and Coremetrics emerged as industry leaders for large enterprises while WebTrends, Google Analytics, IndexTools and Lyris HQ ClickTracks emerged as industry leader for small-to-midsize businesses along with the three listed for large enterprise customers.

It was surprising to see that WebTrends was not considered an enterprise tool anymore, though WebTrends was the only company to score 100% on availability of basic features. (Sidenote: A customer of ours is replacing Coremetrics and going with WebTrends).
Another surprising result was that Omniture was the overall winner even for small-to-midsize businesses.

You can get the complete report at http://www.jupiterresearch.com/bin/item.pl/research:vision/79/id=100411


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Interview with Kathleen Brush, Chief Marketing Officer, WebTrends

Anil: Thank you for taking the time for this interview, let's start with a brief overview of your background.

Kathleen: I have been in executive management in the software industry in the United States and abroad since 1988. During this time, I have held several CMO positions, including positions at Stamps.com and Websense. I have also been CEO and president of a few companies, including Rogue Wave Software and a division of Seagate Software. I have a Ph.D. in Management and International Studies and have taught international marketing at the graduate and undergraduate level. I have written two marketing and business-related books and have authored published articles on marketing and strategy.

Anil: What are the names of the books that you wrote and tell me a little about those books.

Kathleen: High-Tech Strategies in the Internet Era is an A – Z guide for strategy development for high tech products. It has been used at a couple of technical colleges. The book starts with helpful advice on how to go about the research process to identify new products. It then moves to validation, getting buy-in and execution through a technique called strategy deployment.

Watch Your Back is a book of fiction. I know how tedious it can be to read business books, so I decided to try to convey teachings about some of areas of business – most specifically, organizational behavior and the functioning of a board, which are not regularly taught – using a fictional approach.

Anil: Cool. Tell me about your new role at WebTrends?

Kathleen: I have quite a few objectives. I hope to position the WebTrends marketing organization as a showcase for optimizing digital marketing by using our products and those of our partners. The development of a new product strategy will include validating requirements for our current product portfolio and evaluating complementary additions that simplify the life of today's online and offline marketer.

I'd like to see the company increase communications that provide helpful advice for translating the data customers receive from our products into actionable changes to their marketing campaigns. I will also lead an effort to build up our presence in international markets, and an overall refresh of the WebTrends brand.

Anil: Tell me more about "I'd like to see the company increase communications that provide helpful advice for translating the data customers receive from our products into actionable changes to their marketing campaigns." Do you mean building strategic consulting practice or expanding partnership with strategic consulting companies like us or something else?

Kathleen: Something else. WebTrends wants to share our expertise with our customers. We will be putting together seminars, articles and white papers with the aim of helping clients and others to maximize the use of the data they receive from our products to improve the effectiveness of their marketing campaigns.

Anil: What are the challenges you see at WebTrends today?

Kathleen: The WebTrends brand is globally recognized as the pioneer of, and leader in, website analytics, but many do not equate WebTrends as being a leader and innovator in the broader industry of Enterprise Marketing Software (EMS). The process of refreshing our brand to be an innovative global EMS vendor is a challenge the entire company is enjoying.

Anil: What is your plan for overcoming this challenge?

Kathleen: We have developed a comprehensive strategy surrounding new product deliverables, the development of deeper domain experience, the creation of informative communications, the continuous improvement on the execution of world class online and offline marketing programs and building our international presence.

Anil: Where do you see web analytics market heading? What does future look like?

Kathleen: We see web analytics market advancing on a number of fronts: (1) Delivering in-depth, visitor-level intelligence that moves marketers closer to the ideal of one-to-one marketing; (2) Being able to more precisely measure customer engagement; (3) Going beyond analysis and reporting to delivering recommendations that improve results; (4) Being a central and foundational component to an integrated EMS solution; (5) Being a significant component in our customers' plans for company-wide business intelligence.

Anil: How is WebTrends positioning itself for the changing market?

Kathleen: By preparing product, marketing and company strategies that are in line with the evolution of the new EMS industry (as noted above) and that focus primarily on meeting the needs of WebTrends' current and future customers.

Anil: The theme of last year's WebTrends conference was customer engagement and WebTrends' Score product was showcased as the solution to measure visitor engagement. How are the customers embracing the WebTrends Score Product? Do you have any case studies that you can share?

Kathleen: Interest in the product has been very high. It is a brilliant solution for measuring customer engagement and permitting the segmentation of visitors into product/service preference areas that permit finely targeted follow-on campaigns. We do not have any published case studies for Score yet, but look forward to sharing those with you soon.

Anil: What is going to be the theme of this year's conference?

Kathleen: We're still finalizing the theme, but we will be sure to give you an update when it is finalized.

Anil: Finally, what do you think about Omniture? Their market position and all the acquisitions they are doing?

Kathleen: I have taught about the difficulties of acquiring companies and products: such as integrating disparate technologies and merging companies with varying cultures and processes. I think it is unlikely that Omniture will escape easily from many of the inherent problems in company acquisitions. Now, like most, I think integrated marketing software suites are something the market is looking for, but the key will be, as it always is, in the integrity of the integration. It's a question of marketecture vs. architecture. Can Omniture truly integrate the products they have acquired to deliver the synergistic value customers are really looking for? Or will this require an open architecture that easily permits exchanging data among EMS applications?

Anil: Great, I think true integration of the solutions is not going to happen. It will be more around creating an easy exchange of data. Thank you for your time.

2007 Web Analytics and Behavioral Targeting Predictions Follow-up

In January of this year I made five predictions about Web Analytics and Behavioral Targeting for year 2007. Since the year is coming to an end, I feel it is time to do a recap of these predictions and see where I stand with these predictions. Let’s take a look at one prediction at a time.

1. Prediction: Web Analytics- A Great Career Field– There will be a lot more jobs in this field in 2007. A great year for those who are planning to enter this field or looking to move into better jobs in this field. Most marketing jobs will have web analytics as a requirement. Currently there are 1024 open job on Indeed.com but I expect this number to rise as there will lot more openings than qualified candidates.
   
   Follow-up – This was an easy one, I was hiring at that time (and currently too) and based on my discussion with various folks in the industry it was clear that more and more companies were starting to use Web Analytics and it was becoming difficult to find web analyst. When I made this prediction on January 3rd there were 1024 open “web analytics” positions listed on indeed.om, a job aggregating site. Since making this prediction I did a monthly follow-up on open jobs from Jan – Aug, you can find the last (Aug) follow-up at http://webanalysis.blogspot.com/2007/08/web-analytics-jobs-trend-aug-2007.html
   On Nov 20th there were 2045 open positions listed on indeed.com, 99.7% increase since I made this prediction in January. Open positions have been up every month and Oct was the highest month ever with 2085 open positions on Oct 1st. So with this I can say that my prediction number one has come true.
   If you are trying to get into web analytics field I recommend reading interviews I did with various web analysts in the field (Yes I am still doing these interviews, if you want to participate please email me at batraonline at gmail.com)



2. Prediction: Lot more new writers – There will a lot more bloggers and writers in this field. Can somebody count how many blogs on Web Analytics are currently? This will help me set the baseline.
   
   Follow-up - I don’t know how many total blogs on web analytics were there last year but know for sure that a lot of new blogs on web analytics have started since I made that prediction (If I can locate all the blogs then I will publish a list in near future). Three new books on Web Analytics were published this year. Web Analytics Books by Avinash Kaushik (Web Analytics: An Hour a Day ) and Jason Burby and Shane Atchison (Actionable Web Analytics: Using Data to Make Smart Business Decisions) were planned before I made my prediction so can’t take credit for those. Justin Cutroni also wrote a book on Google Analytics, a great resource and a must read for all those who are using Google Analytics.



3. Prediction: Web Analytics won’t be standing alone - Marketers will want 360 view of the customers. Integration of various data sources and tools will be expected from web analytics and other supporting tool vendors. Omniture started the trend with Omniture Genesis and this will continue we will see more acquisitions and partnerships similar to Omnitures.
   
   Follow-up – WebTrends had similar integrations, the latest one is with SilverPop, an email provider. Another example is WebTrends Marketing Lab integration with Microsoft Dynamics CRM to provide online marketers a consolidated, real-time view into both online visitor activity and offline customer information..
   Omniture’s acquisition of Offermetica and TouchClarity and integration with Salesforce is yet another step in this direction.
   I expect to see this trend continuing in the next year.
   (Also see my recap of this and following predictions.)



4. Prediction: Web Analytics will be about taking actions – More and more marketers would like to take actions and not just report the findings. It just won’t be about what happened, it will be about taking action to drive sales, user satisfaction, lead generation etc. Incentives and bonuses will be tied to the online KPIs. Optimization and Behavioral Targeting will become a common term used by marketers.
   
   Follow-up: Megan Burns of Forrester Research echoed the same thing in her Report: Web Analytics Market Pumped for Growth. She said “Many Web analytics companies started collecting data about Web site visits and providing reporting tools to analyze that data," "Now they're moving to the next level of value, which is enabling people to act on that data and becoming a platform for managing interactive marketing activities." (Also see the follow-up I did earlier this year).
   Acquisition of Offermetica (Optimization) and TouchClarity (Behavioral Targeting) by Omniture are strong testament of my above prediction. Marketers are demanding a seamless way to not only learn from data but also to take actions to improve site performance. Some web analytics experts are now calling this Web Analytics 2.0. Here is what Josh James CEO of Omniture had to say when they acquired Offermetica
   “The acquisition is a key part of Omniture’s strategy to deliver the most comprehensive solution for optimizing online business. Offermatica leverages Omniture’s recent acquisition of Touch Clarity as the two are highly complementary and together address the spectrum from A/B testing and multivariate testing to behavioral targeting. Offermatica enables companies to define and test the structure and elements of their sites, and Omniture TouchClarity™ enables companies to deliver the optimal content to any individual at any time….This combination, with Omniture’s analytics as the underlying foundation, provides the industry’s first and only integrated site optimization suite.”..A year ago it became very clear to us that our customers wanted to leverage their data through a range of testing and optimization tools. Once we acquired the leading behavioral targeting technology, our customers continued to validate our thinking that in addition to behavioral targeting, A/B testing and multivariate testing were distinct and critical components of their long-term online strategy. Combining these capabilities into a single, integrated offering, built on patented behavioral targeting and testing technology, answers the market need for a complete optimization solution,”


5. Prediction: Behavioral Targeting – Only few main behavioral network players will be left and some of the existing ones with poor networks will either go out of business or be sold. See my previous article on why size of network matter. Behavioral Targeting won’t exist in isolation. Web Analytics tool will have to support behavioral targeting and visa versa. Also, on-site behavioral targeting will become very common.
   
   Follow-up: Several acquisitions happened in Behavioral Targeting since I made the above prediction. Recent acquisition of Tacoda by AOL and BlueLithium by yahoo proved me right. I think Revenue Science is next in line and will be sold in next few months.
   Also acquisition of Touch Clarity by Omniture proves that web analytics tools have to support behavioral targeting and visa versa. It also proves my point that on-site behavioral targeting is becoming very common. (http://webanalysis.blogspot.com/2007/09/convergence-of-web-analytics-and.html see my post titled Convergence of Web Analytics and Behavioral Targeting.
   

Yes, I am 5/5 on my 2007 predictions.

What do I see next? I will be making my prediction soon, but this is what I see coming next

1. A tighter integration will happen between ad serving and Web Analytics. Maybe Omniture will buy an ad serving company.


2. Oracle gets into Web Analytics. Yes I think this is going to happen soon.(more on this later)


3. Google Analytics becomes a strong competitor in enterprise Web Analytics space.

WebTrends CMO Departing

Nov 1st I reported about the management shakeup at Webtrends. The I did a follow-up after talking to several employees of Webtrends regarding these changes. Though I was offered an opportunity to talk to Tim Kopp, the Chief Marketing Officer of WebTrends whom I have met on several occasions, I could not talk to him because I was in a hurry to put my post out and also Tim had already provided his view to the press and I did not expect to hear anything other than what he already told others.

Today Eric Peterson reported that Tim Kopp is the latest executive to depart Webtrends.

Wow!!! this is definitely another huge news out of Webtrends in less than a months. As I understand Tim was a force behind all the comeback Webtrends was trying to make, so his departure seems to be a big blow to the company. I am sure there will be more turnover, now it will be the time for many old employees to leave. I have been through similar changes in past so I know that it takes time before everything settles down. At the end it might not be such a bad thing, but who knows, time will tell.

I would like to hear the views of Webtrends' employees and of course WebTrends' official words on it.

Omniture, WebTrends and the Web Analytics Industry

Last week saw pretty big changes in Web Analytics Industry. Omniture bought one of it’s biggest competitor Visual Science and later in the week there was management shakeout at WebTrends.

"This has been one of the weirder weeks in Web analytics ever. One of the biggest publicly traded companies gets acquired, and another lets its executives go. Now I'm afraid to wake up tomorrow and find out what else might be going on," said Eric Peterson to ClickZ.

I agree, the changes in Web Analytics Industry happened so fast that you never know what might next. As I was writing this post I was worried that I will have to change the post by the time I finish it.

Omniture's purchase of Visual Sciences was the first big news of the week. It was great news for Visual Science investors and Omniture. Omniture bought one of their biggest competitors and further strengthened their position as a market leader in Web Analytics industry.
One of the beneficiaries of Omniture/Visual Sciences deal is going be WebTrends. Just like Omniture and other Web Analytics vendors, WebTrends will also have to compete in a market with one less competitor. Not everybody who would have gone with Visual Sciences will now go with OmnitureVisualScience.

I have found that there are generally 3 types of customer. One those who always like to go with number one vendor in the market, they will go with Omniture (and would have anyway) even though it might not give them everything they need for the price they need. There are those who make rational decision based on through due-diligence, they will choose Omniture, WebTrend or whatever tool makes most sense given their needs and budget. And then are those who will go with number 2 or number 3 just to make sure they don’t become prisoners of the market leader and make sure they don’t empower a company to become a monopoly. These customers will choose anybody but Omniture.

Recent changes at WebTrends however have caused some concern in the market. Blogger and Reporters in Web Analytics field have been speculating about what it means to WebTrends and Web Analytics industry. There are conflicting reports on if these changes are to put WebTrends on a path to be acquired in next few months or if they are to better prepare WebTrends to take on Omniture.

In my opinion, it will not be good for web analytics industry if Omniture also acquires WebTrends. As Sean Burton commented on my blog post blog post about WebTrends Management changes “I doubt that Omniture would be looking to buy WT at the junction, and it would be a crying shame if they did.

The competition between the two companies has driven the market forwards, and has resulted in numerous improvements for the end customer.”

WebTrends is a top competitor to Omniture today. As long as these two companies are competing there will be innovation, at least in near future. We certainly need more than one player in the market to continue innovation.

After coming back from WebTrends Engage Conference I came to the conclusion that WebTrends was on the right track with their new products and I expected them to give Omniture run for its money. At that time I did not even think about the management changes that just happened.

I am very impressed with Marketing Lab 2 and hope that WebTrends investors (Francisco Partners) don’t sell the company. If they do decide to sell then they should sell it someone who can keep the competition going on in this market. It is very critical for the growth of Omniture, the other tool vendors and this industry overall.

The sentiment at WebTrends is very positive and all the people I have talked to or heard from did not give any indication that the company is getting ready for a sale, on the contrary they are excited to move forward in this red hot web analytics market.

Here is one of the comments that an employee of WebTrends left on my blog:
“Wild speculation and facts on the ground are, it turns out, two very different things. I am employed @ WebTrends presently, and can tell you that the change in management is a viewed positively by employees. The partners could have sold the company, which is a net positive asset in anyone’s eyes (consider the brand, customers, product set, years of exp. developing solutions in the verticals, 2X growth since divestiture, etc, etc.). But they chose the strategic move, retrenching, which will require further investment but reflects a longer-term view. The interior culture had eroded badly due to the lack of strategically cohesive vision, employee engagement, unity among the functional business units, and execution in the channel. The surgery performed removes the chief architects of the disaster that was our management team. Certainly the partners could now cut staff levels to improve the marketability of the company in the hope of selling. Omniture would be an unlikely suitor given the VS buy (cash, FCC, etc. make their being the only enterprise vendor in the space unlikely). If the worst that happened is acquisition by a better funded SW behemoth as a stand alone business unit I don’t think you’d hear much opposition from employees, and it could radically improve WebTrends position. Change happens in SW. This is just another new day for a company that has grown accustomed to high-velocity change.”

Another former employee (recent) of WebTrends, also seemed very confident in Marketing Lab 2 (ML2) and WebTrends ability to take on Omniture.

One of the current employee said that Webtrends has seen YOY growth in last year and investors did not have to put any more money, which is a good sign but the growth is not what board was expecting based on how fast the industry is growing.
He also said that there is no plan for “fire sale” as a reporter from Portland Business Journal reported. The reporter could not contact the management of WebTrends and reported based on the speculation. He added that the WebTrends Visitor index and Scoring are getting good market traction. More than what WebTrends can currently handle. They have to do some more work on technical side and services to further improve WebTrends position in the market. He said we are rated number one in integration with other vendors such email, behavioral targeting etc. and board wants to continue use these strengths and take the company to next level.

Another senior employee of WebTrends said that these changes were welcome and somewhat expected by the senior team here. He said that the mood was very positive at WebTrends. He said that they know that they are number two in a very hot market, but also are the only sizeable player with new products, a big team in EMEA, partners in Asia Pac, etc., plus $80 million in revenue. According to him, it is okay to be number two, the underdog for once. He was enthusiastic about Webtrend’s new direction and said that they are ready to steal some market share from Omniture. He said “We’ve won some big deals from them recently, so why should we not take more?”

I wish Greg Drew and Jason Palmer good luck in their new ventures. I am sure they will continue to be a part of this growing industry. I also hope that WebTrends will continue to be a strong market force and provide the competitive landscape that this industry needs to keep innvovating.

Thoughts? Comments?

Management Shakeup at WebTrends

According to a news by Portland Business Journal CEO Greg Drew and three other executives at WebTrends Inc. have left the company. Details of their departure remain unclear.
The other executives that are missing from the list on the WebTrends site are Jason Palmer, vice president of product management; Tore Steen, vice president of business and corporate development; and Hamid Bahadori, vice president of product development and hosted operations.

Bruce T. Coleman, CEO of El Salto Advisors, a consulting firm that provides interim management to computer software and service companies is listed as the CEO of WebTrends.

According to the report, a number of former WebTrends employees believe that a quick sale of the company is imminent. They speculate that with its market share slipping, WebTrends management wanted to sell the company to its biggest rival, Omniture Inc., a publicly traded, $107 million company based in Orem, Utah.

Wow, this changes the whole web analytics landscape. Will Omniture buy WebTrends now? I believed that WebTrends was making a comeback and was ready to give Omniture a hard time but I guess I was wrong. Will Omniture buy them and coremetrics right now and just own the whole Web Analytics space?

Comments?

WebTrends Engage Conference

Earlier this week, I attended WebTrends’ Exchange conference in Las Vegas. Here are some highlights of the conference.

Evening before the conference

On Monday evening, WebTrends provided us a chance to see Live Diet Coke and Mentos show by Eepybird.com, you can see these guys in action here:



Expert Panel on Engagement


Picture courtesy June Dershewitz of Semphonic.

As the name suggest the theme of the conference was visitor engagement. I had a privilege to be on a panel with Gary Angel, Andy Beal, Manoj Jasra, Jim Novo and Jim Sterne. All of us, except Andy Beal, came from Web Analytics background and were in agreement that Engagement was not an excuse, it is a metrics. Andy Beal brought some interesting points about how we should look at engagement not from just web point of view (which was mostly the focus of this conference) but should take other channel e.g. offline into consideration when measuring customer engagement.


360 degree view of the customers

Remember the Predictions I made in January of this year? (Yes they have all come true, 100% on the mark; I just have to do a follow-up post). I wrote
“Web Analytics won’t be standing alone - Marketers will want 360 view of the customers.”.
Guess what? 360 view of customer was another of the subject that was discussed in this conference. Another validation of my predictions.

WebTrends Gone Wild!!!

On Tuesday evening, WebTrends threw a great party at the Palms hotel. The view of Vegas strip from the club was excellent, great choice of venue. It was interesting to see these web analytics folks “engaged” in dancing, free drinks and with each other.

New Products from WebTrends

I was very impressed with Visitor Intelligence and WebTrends Score. I have to say Visitor Intelligence is a great tools for doing advanced segmentation. A very easy to use interface, just drag and drop dimensions and measures and build your segments. It also has the ability to exports the cookie ids so you can take action on your segments, yes I am talking about targeting (behavioral targeting in particular).
Visitor Score allows you to score visitors engagement with the sites, product, attribute scores to various actions that a visitors takes on the site. Visitors Scores will allow you to measure visitor/customer engagement with a very simple interface. However the challenge most of the business will face it to determine what score to assign to which activities (and this is where I can help you). As I wrote last week,
If defined properly (that’s the key) engagement metrics can be good measure of past and predictor of future. Here is tool which can help you in defining engagement. Also, score provides a way to segment your users and then do on-site Behavioral Targeting.
According to my friend Jacques Warren
“Score will need to run on Visitor Intelligence, which will in turn need to run on Marketing Warehouse. This means that you will need to get new money to pay for them, whatever you have spent on the regular product.”

My New Prediction
WebTrends is on the right track with their new products and you will see them giving Omniture run for their money. Omniture get ready for some stiff competition. The more I think the more convinced I get that Webtrends is making the right moves. Howvere WebTrends has to make some more moves to get these products adopted by the market. I have my opinions on how Webtrends can make these products a success, and I already talked to them about it. Thank you for listening, I hope you will also act on what I said. If you are from Webtrends and want to listen to those again I would love to talk with you(Note: I will be at eMetrics next week). I have talked to several people about my concerns and they all agreed, so this is not just me.

Other reads:
Jacques Warren
June Dershewitz

What’s Next for me
I have a lot to write, two main ones are

1. A follow-up post on my Predictions


2. My view of the future and how cookie deletion won’t matter, yes, you will have to wait for it. I have discussed my views with two fellow bloggers and they have promised not to reveal it.

Next week, I am going to eMetrics, where I will be speaking about Behavioral Targeting
Then I am off to India for a week.

WebTrends Engage Conference 2007 in Las Vegas

Next week I will be in Las Vegas on 8, 9 and 10. No, I am not going to gamble (well maybe a little) but I will be there to attend WebTrends Engage 2007 conference. This is another great web analytics conference. I highly recommend this conference even if you are not a WebTrends customer, as it will allow you to see what WebTrends can do for your business. This conference will provide you an opportunity to learn from current WebTrends customers and other experts in the field.

I was a speaker at the last conference in Orlando. This year I will be on a customer engagement panel with elite group of web analytics and online marketing gurus. The panel on consumer engagement will include the following
• Gary Angel, SEMphonic
• Anil Batra, ZeroDash1 (Me)
• Andy Beal, Marketing Pilgrim
• Manoj Jasra, Enquiro Search Solutions
• Jim Novo, The Drilling Down Project
• Jim Sterne, Web Analytics Association and Emetrics

Some of the speakers at the conference are

Paul Wilmington, Naked Communications
Julian Brewer, Barclays Bank
Kevin Doohan, ConAgra
Loran Gutt, ShopNBC

I will arrive there on 8th evening; I would love to meet with readers of this blog, so if you are going to be there email me at batraonline at gmail.com.

You can read about the conference and register at http://www.webtrends.com/ms/engage07/

Web Analytics Jobs Trend: Aug 2007

Here is the latest update on “Web Analytics” jobs.
This snapshot was taken on Aug 1st from Indeed.com and SimplyHired.com. Both of these sites are job aggregators that collect open job positions from individual company sites and from job boards such as HotJobs.com. SimplyHired.com also provides job boards called job-a-matic, like the Job Board I have on my blog. These job boards allow individual bloggers or site owners to quickly create a job board specific to their site’s content. Not much has changed from the last month, the jobs remain at the same level as the last month.

Note: Month in the above graph represents the month when the data was gathered.A lot of job positions never are listed on any job board or company sites. These jobs are filled by networking and referrals. So if you are looking for a job and none of the listed jobs meet your passions float your name, let people in your networks and recruiters know what you are looking for and chances are you will find your dream job.


Which tool experience is in demand?
Again, not a big change from last month.

Open Job Positions on indeed.com and simplyhired.com for various web analytics tools.

3 month comparison of open job positions for various web analytics tools based on indeed.com data.

If you want to start a career in web analytics and don't know where to start, check out my article starting a career in Web Analytics and my Web Analyst interview series to see how others got started in web analytics.

Thank you to all of you who promoted and participated in the web analyst job surevy that I conducted last month. I will be publishing the results soon.

This will be the last monthly update on Job trends unless I see a big change. I might switch to quarterly update instead so stay tuned.

Web Analytics Jobs Trend: July 2007

Here is the latest update on “Web Analytics” jobs.
This snapshot was taken on July 1st. from Indeed.com and SimplyHired.com. Both of these sites are job aggregators that collect open job positions from individual company sites and from job boards such as HotJobs.com. SimplyHired.com also provides job boards called job-a-matic, like the Job Board I have on my blog. These job boards allow individual bloggers or site owners to quickly create a job board specific to their site’s content.
Unlike last month, simplyhired.com is now listing more jobs than indeed.com. One likely reason is that all these job-a-matic jobs boards are getting more and more jobs listed on them and these boards are only tracked by simplyhired.


Note Month in the above graph represents the month when the data was gathered.

Indeed.com shows a big downwards trend in open jobs while simplyhired.com shows a slight upward tick. Web Analytics jobs listed on indeed.com are down 21% from last month. On Simplyhired.com open jobs are up 2.64% from last month.
“Web Analytics” jobs listed on indeed.com are up 54.79% from Jan 1st numbers. Since simplyhired now list more open jobs I might switch to reporting baseline with respect to numbers reported by simplyhired. I started tracking jobs listed on simplyhired.com from March onwards. Compared to March “web analytics” jobs listed on SimplyHired.com are up 49.82%.
A lot of job positions never are listed on any job board or company sites. These jobs are filled by networking and referrals. So if you are looking for a job and none of the listed jobs meet your passions float your name, let people in your networks and recruiters know what you are looking for and chances are you will find your dream job.

Which tool experience is in demand?


Open Job Positions on indeed.com and simplyhired.com for various web analytics tools.


3 month comparison of open job positions for various web analytics tools based on indeed.com data.

Key Findings

1. WebTrends and Omniture skills are equally in demand.


2. Open Jobs listed for almost all the tools, except Google Analytics, is down from last month.


3. Last month I wrote that I expected “Google Analytics” jobs to go up considering all the press coverage V2 of Google Analytics got. Voila!! this month’s data proves that I was right with my prediction. Jobs requiring “Google Analytics” skills are up 14% and 19% on indeed.com and simplyhired.com respectively.

I have to admit, I am pleasantly surprised by Google Analytics capabilities. (one day I will write about my experiences with Google Analytics). If you are looking for help with Google Analytics please email me at batraonline at gmail.com.

Want to start a career in web analytics? Check out my article starting a career in Web Analytics and my Web Analyst interview series to see how others got started in web analytics.

I am conducting a survey to understand the salaries offered to Web Analysts (All levels). I will publish the results in future posts. Please take 2 mins to take the Web Analysts Salary survey.

Is Web Analytics dead? No, it is maturing

It seems like a title like “XYZ is dead”, substitute XYZ for anything, is in fashion. I guess it gets more attention than saying XYZ is maturing or XYZ is changing. Not long ago there was a title like “Page views is Dead”, now there is an article by Nick Sharp of Webtrends “Web Analytics is Dead”.

Nick Sharp wrote:

“It might seem strange to hear those words coming from the mouth of a vendor that’s been selling the benefits of web analytics for more than ten years, but we genuinely believe that web analytics as a standalone discipline is no longer relevant to today’s marketers.
Marketers have turned their focus away from examining the activity on their website to include the results they’re achieving in other areas of online marketing, such as search campaigns, banner ads and e-mail tools. As a result, they’re not just looking for tools that measure their site performance, but also a way of bringing together the solutions they use to measure and track their online marketing in one single system.
This is why we see web analytics evolving into marketing performance management (MPM), which gives marketers a complete picture of their online marketing performance so they can manage and improve on campaigns across their website, online marketing channels and customer marketing programmes.”

I completely agree with Nick. I wrote earlier this year in my 2007 predictions “Web Analytics won’t be standing alone - Marketers will want 360 view of the customers. Integration of various data sources and tools will be expected from web analytics and other supporting tool vendors.” Nick is proving my point right.

The only thing I don’t agree with him is the title of the article. This does not mean Web Analytics is dead. It is actually maturing, it is growing up. Web Analytics responsibilities are becoming more than just measuring how people are behaving on the site. It is becoming responsible for showing the effectiveness of other online marketing efforts. Soon it will have to tie in with the CRM system (some are already doing that). It won’t be just about what visitors did on the site, it has to become predictive. It can only happen when all systems about visitors (and customers) come together. With all the system tied together we will be able to predict things like

• On an average it takes 3 visits on the site before a visitor comes into the store (brick or mortar or online or through sales partner) and becomes a customer. Since we have a X% increase in visitors with 3 visits we can predict sales to be $Y in coming quarter.


• A,B,C pages, visits, section, paths etc on the website results in $XX in sales(offline, online, partners, other sales channels) in 4 weeks. Considering we got X number of visitors with A,B,C paths we can forecast $Y in revenue in coming month” etc. We should spend $Z on the banner ad on Google network and $Y on Yahoo network and $Z on Microsoft Network because they will result in X pages views of ABC page and hence maximizing our ROI and bringing in $YYY dollars in revenue (again this could be offline, online or thorough other sales channels).


• Our customers are divided into 5 distinct segments; they exhibit distinct behavior on the site and have distinct needs and buying behavior. Considering that visitors who match the onsite behavior of segment 1 is growing on our site we need to focus our marketing efforts so that we can grow other segment in a way that benefits us or we can plan our inventory considering the needs of growing segment 1.


• We know that visitors who come via search and come X times and Y visits to page A tend to respond better to Free Shipping than 10% off, so let’s give them a message which Shows them Free Shipping. We know we can expect Z% conversion. Even though we won’t make money upfront, life time value of these customer is $XXX.

I am sure some companies are already doing this or at least thinking about it. Soon this will become a norm, more will be expected from the Web Analytics.
So is Web Analytics Dead? No, it is maturing.
Comments? What do you think?

Cookie versus Panel Based User Counting

comScore released the results of a study they did which claimed that cookie based measurement overstate Unique Users by as much as 150%.

I was not surprised by the results, not because I knew that cookies was over estimating because this is what I would have expected based on who was sponsoring the study. Since the study was conducted by comScore I wouldn't have expected them to come up saying panel data is worse than cookies based counting. If this study were done by Omniture or WebTrends we would have probably heard a different story. For example, if we were to compare wine and coffee and see which one is bad for health, wine company’s research will say wine is good for health while coffee is not. Coffee company will come with their research which will say coffee is good and wine is bad.

It is very likely that the users who participated in the study knew that they were being tracked (and they participated to get freebies) so they developed a tendency to clear cookies and hence skewed the results. There could be several reasons why comScore survey might be correct or not but comScore did not publish those so we can’t say for sure if panel based is really better than cookie based count.

It is likely that comScore is trying to solidify its position as a standard in audience calculation by releasing this study. In my article on Google and Behavioral Targeting I mentioned that Google is putting it’s cookie everywhere and could potentially get in the business that comScore is in currently (measuring audience size). This possibly could be a preemptive move by comScore. Don’t know for sure since I don’t have the details on how this study was done.

The crux of the matter is that no matter what system you use you will never get an accurate count of UU's. Even pages views are reported differently by different systems. Two panel based systems don't report the same numbers and two web analytics tool do not report the same number. To assume one system is not accurate or is better than other system is jumping to conclusions without basis. Both systems have their own advantages and disadvantages.

For individual site owners you need to pick one system, cookie based or panel based, and stick with it and accept the numbers. How does it matter if I told you that you actually get 3,000 users (or visits) and not 5000? What will change? What will you do differently? Have you ever moved from one web analytics system to another? You know they don't report same numbers. Say, your new system reports lower number than your old system than what are you going to do? Which one is correct, old or new? It is about trending and growth. You will probably use same growth and retention strategies no matter what the number is. If you goal is to increase the visitors by X% no matter what visitor count you use you will try to do X% of your current system weather that is cookie based or panel based.

If you are trying to compare sites then do the same thing, choose one system for comparison and stick with it. The same goes with advertising, if you are buying or selling ad inventory based on Unique Visitor count both buyer and seller will have to settle for one system and stick to stick to it.

However, one thing that surprised me in this study was a quote from Tacoda. Their whole business (Behavioral Targeting) is dependent on cookies and now they will validate with panel data because....(...they don't believe the size of their segment? Does that mean they will adjust the reach they claim they have?) Can someone from Tacoda please help me understand it?

Web Analytics Jobs Trend Update: April 2007

To followup on my predictions here is the latest update on “Web Analytics” jobs.
This snapshot was taken on April 1st.


Starting this month, I chose to include simplyhired.com. They are also a job aggregator site like indeed.com but they also provide job boards called job-a-matic, like the Job Board I have on my blog.
These job boards allow individual bloggers or site owners to quickly create a job board specific to their site’s content. Indeed.com have more jobs listed than simply hired, not sure if indeed.com is aggregating all these jobs on job-a-matic job boards or not.


After dipping about 10.87% in March, open jobs listed on April 1st were up 8.33% on indeed.com and up 20.34% on simply hired. “Web Analytics” jobs listed on indeed.com are up 61% from Jan 1st numbers. It is still a very hot market for “Web Analytics” jobs.

Overall job postings containing “web analytics” as a percentage of all the open jobs positions listed on indeed.com is shown below.



To see which tools are in demand, I did some search on tool related job openings and found the Omniture was in lead closely followed by WebTrends.