What’s your title?

The web analytics Yahoo group is having some funs these days. If you are not in the group, here is the replay for you:

It all started with a simple question:

I am looking for what you folks call your analytics folks. I am the Digital
Audience Analyst for a media company. I use cutting edge Web Analytics software
and stay current in industry research. I am not sure what folks call the
Analysts who perform their web analytics and administer the codes and analysis.
Please respond and let me know.

The replies are just pouring in:

"I work for a very well known UK Premier League Soccer Club.

They refer to me as their 'Website Analyst' - although my remit seems to reach
far wider than the 2 websites (one content, and one e-Commerce) that we
maintain.

In the last few weeks I have worn more hats than a habberdasher. SEO, PPC
Marketing, Web Analysis, useability testing, management reporting, yadda,
yadda..."

"My current title is "Web Metrics Analyst", at an ad agency."

"Web Analytics Specialist"

"I work for a creative agency and my title is Web Analytics Specialist. I too
wear many hats (some of which are not even related to WA). Hope this helps!"

"While so many other appropriate names were put forth...I'm compelled by this
query to respond with:

'There are those who call me.....Tim!?'"

:Web Analytics Analyst (in the Department of Redundancy Department I think)

By far my favorite title!!?:)"

Jim Sterne, threw in the most authoritative and complete answer:

Among the more interesting titles of people who came to the eMetrics Marketing
Optimization Summit in San Jose:

Advertiser Analytics Engineer
Advisory Solutions Architect
Assistant Director, Business, Management, Legal & IT Programs
Chief Analytics & Optimization Officer
Chief Analytics Officer
Chief Search Officer
Chief Strategy Officer
Chief Visionary Officer
Client Engagement Manager
Content-Management Expert
Corporate Marketing Brand Manager
Creative & Optimization Manager
Customer Experience Consultant
Customer Intelligence
Digital Marketing Analyst
Director of Analytical Consulting
Director of Analytics
Director of Business Analytics
Director of Consumer Marketing
Director of Data Insights
Director of Data Strategy
Director of Decision Support
Director of Digital Research
Director of eBusiness
Director of Insights and Optimization
Director of Online Operations
Director of Optimization Services
Director of Research, Entertainment & Games
Director of Retention
Director of Search & Analytics
Director of Strategic Business Analytics
Director of Solution Engineering
Director of User Experience Optimization
Director of Web Business Strategy
Director of Web Strategy
EBusiness Analytics Manager
EBusiness Metrics & Analytics Manager
Emarketing Analyst
Executive Director of Business and Marketing Analysis
Financial Analyst
Founder, Chairman and Chief Revenue Officer
Interactive Marketing Analyst
Media Analytics Manager
Merchandising Manage
Online Engagement Strategist
Real Time Analytics Architect
Search Marketing Specialist
Senior Analytics Manager
Senior Director UX + Analytics
Senior Director, Global Site Analytics
Senior Web Analytics Researcher
SEO Analyst
Site Optimization Manager
Social Media Marketing Manager
Sr. Customer Experience Manager
Sr. Director, Database Marketing
Sr. eCommerce Analyst
Sr. Manager Marketing Analytics
Sr. Manager, Experience Design
Sr. Manager, Global eCommerce
Sr. Marketing Operations Analyst
Sr. Marketing Strategist
User Research and Analytics
Vice President, Global Analytics and Optimization
VP Analytics
VP Internet Business and Technology
VP Marketing & Analytics
VP of Blogging Evangelism
Web Analytics Analyst (in the Department of Redundancy Department I think)
Web Analytics, Corporate Marketing
Website Optimizer
Worldwide Marketing Operations

As for myself, my formal job title at Dell is Senior E-business Consultant which I don’t like. I actually changed that to Senior Analyst, Web Analytics and Optimization on my business card, as I feel this reflects my real role and responsibility much better. The dream job title I want, is what Avinash Kaushik has, “Analytics Evangelist”. The truth is though, it probably doesn’t matter what your job title is. What really matters is who you are and what you do.

But it is complete ok to have fun. So what’s your dream job title?

Speak at WAW Austin

Thanks for Jennifer White’s invitation, I got a chance to speak at Web Analytics Wednesday Austin  . There are about twenty or so smart folks in Buca di Beppo and we had a great time together.

In my presentation, I shared my journey to the Board of Director of Web Analytics Association, what WAA is all about, why all web analysts should join WAA membership, as well as my learnings from the eMetrics Summit 2009 in San Jose. I ended up my speech with five tips and they are:

5. Join WAA, grow the community and grow yourself
4. Attend eMetrics Summit if you can; if not, take advantage of any events like WAW, Webinars etc.
3. Don’t become reporting squirrel; connecting dots and driving actionable insights
2. Focus on three things: revenue, cost or customer experience
1. Think big but start small: little changes can have large impact

The full presentation can be viewed here

Thanks everyone for attending the event and look forward to seeing you again. Be sure to join WAA!

Here I am San Jose!

Finally on my way to San Jose.

By no means, this is going to be a very special trip. Not only I am going to attend the first WAA Board of Directors meeting followed by eMetrics Summit from Tuesday to Thursday, but also because everything else going on, specifically the whole swine flu thing.

In my backpack, I’ve got my iPod loaded with songs, podcasts and sermons I like, Nikon Coolpix, to take pictures and videos whenever I want, Logtitech Webcam, to talk to my wife and kids with ooVoo, and of course, my Dell laptop, to work at night when all the eMetrics craziness is gone.

But this time, I’ve got something else. My dear wife, fearing of the pandemic spreading of swine flu, bought me two 3M N95 masks, and a gelFast personal hand hygiene unit. Imaging on my belt, there is hand sanitizer on the left, and Nikon Coopix and my Blackberry Pearl Flip on the right. No matter what, I’ve got myself prepared.

I definitely don’t think I am a risk averse type of person. If I was, I wouldn’t choose to risk my life and climb big mountains with a bunch of amateur student mountaineers from college. Quite contrarily, I think I am a type of person enjoy risk taking. But to risk my own life is one thing, to put my family at risk is another. Bible says, “A wise man is cautious…” (Proverb 14:16) Why a wise man needs to be cautious? Because he needs to take care of his family!

I booked my travel and registered eMetrics summit two weeks ago but only made up my mind until Friday when I told my wife, “Honey, I think I will go, but with extra caution”. She gracefully agreed. What complicated the situation was she suddenly got a fever on Friday night and had 101 temperatures. We were about to attend spring outing with the church group on Saturday morning and a house party with my wife’s colleagues in the evening. We canceled both. Although we know the chance is slim, we didn’t want to take it, and we didn’t want others feel uncomfortable either. I almost gave up. No matter how much I love this “web analytics” thing, I can’t leave my wife behind especially when she is sick.

But thank God. My wife feels much better today and she encourages me to go, at least for the Board of Director meeting because she understands that’s very important to me.

Maybe you are laughing at me…maybe you think we are over concerned. The reason I am telling you all these is that I want to say “thank you”, as the newly elected Director of the Board of WAA. I understand how difficult for you to come out and make time for this three days summit. It is challenging to get companies to pay for the registration fee, travel and lodging these days, as each one of them is cutting back on OPEX. It is uneasy to leave families, friends and communities behind. The three days’ summit is not like a vacation, but a brain washing, quite painful if you are not used to it. And when you are back, your managers expect you to deliver immediate 1000% ROI…do the math and calculate how much conversion rate you need improve.

I understand all these, but I am confident as you are and believe that these three days will be different. You and I will learn everything as we can. We will immerse ourselves in the ever-changing technologies, thought provoking presentations and workshops, not mentioning life changing networkings and meetups…

So that’s my little story of eMetrics. How about you? Do you have your story too? Tell us how you overcame challenges and finally made your way to San Jose!

In Memory of Hosam Elkhodary

I have no idea who Hosam Elkhodary is until I got the following email from Jim Sterne on April 7

[Jim's email:
Dear Friends -
I am so very sad that the web analytics industry has lost an enormous proponent, eMetrics enthusiast and talented UBC WA instructor. Hosam Elkhodary's heart gave out suddenly yesterday. There are very few details at the moment but it was completely out of the blue. Those of you who met Hosasm know of his passion and his joy for our industry.
He will be missed. ]

Since then, there are a number of emails flooding in the WAA yahoo group from people who know Hosam very well such as Aaron W, Anil Batra & June Li. A donation fund in memory of Hosam was also set up and here is the link to the Heart and Stroke Foundation  June specifically reminded us,

“In addition designating that the contribution is in memoriam of Hosam, please make sure you address the card as follows, which will doubly ensure the donation is directed properly:
Abdalla Elkhodary
7 Delaney Drive
Ajax, Ontario
L1T 4B2″

And that’s what I did just few minutes ago.

The sad loss of Hosam made me recall how my dad passed away in a similar fashion 11 years ago. My mom, my sisters and I were left with sorrow and grief for many years and we still can’t completely get away from the fact that he left us at such a young age. My dad died when he was 49 years old and I guess Hosam is probably even younger.

All these just remind me how much I should cherish the life I have now. As we are optimizing website all day long, let’s not forget there is a deeper meaning of our lives.

Ten Reasons to Vote for Ed

The voting period for the WAA 2009 Board of Directors election is now open. If you are a WAA memeber, you should have received the voting instruction along with user name and password. I highly encourage you to take this great opportunity to vote for the people you trust most. 

Of course, I will be more than happy if you vote for me in the practitioner sector. In addition to my written answers and interviews to the four questions the election committee asked, here are the list of top 10 reasons why you should vote for me.

Some of the following claims might not be 100% accurate. I’ll take the blame if they are not, as long as you enjoy reading and have fun.

Ready? Here we go:

Ed is the only one on the ballot

…who doesn’t have a title of Director, VP or CEO etc. (read as “Ed is like the current stock market which has great potential to grow”)

…who is originally from China (read as “Ed likes Chinese food”)

…who has ever climbed a mountain as high as 24,000 feet (read as “Ed is more risk averse now”)

…whose car got hit two days ago by a severe hail storm (read as “Ed lives in a city which motto is to ‘keep it wierd” )

…who can’t pronounce “Analytics” right, no matter how hard he tried (read as “Ed has some sense of humor”)

…who has the least experience with Facebook. To be exact, one day plus two hours at 1:30pm CST as I am writing this post. (read as “Ed is becoming Facebook addict just like you)

…who also has the least experience in the web analytics field comparing with those web analytics “Gods” and “Goddess” (read as “Ed has a fresh perspective and open mind”)

…who is a Super Web Analyst (read as “Ed is a marketing guy”)

…who is endorsed by Bryan Eisenbergon Linkedin (read as “Did Ed bribe Bryan for this?”)

The last but not the least. Ed is a lucky man who has a great wife and two adorable kids, Gloria and Joshua.

Only this time, I wish I am not the only one on the ballot. After all, at the end of day, it’s what our family matters most to us.

I wish you have a great weekend.

Running for the WAA Board of Director as a Practitioner

My name: Ed Wu
My job title: Senior Analyst, Global Consumer Online
Company: Dell Inc.
Country: USA
Sector of activity: Practitioner
Complete profile: http://www.linkedin.com/in/edwu06

General background/bio

I am currently the senior analyst for Dell’s Global Consumer Online business. I am responsible for driving strategic analytics initiatives, recommending actionable ideas to fuel the optimization engine, evangelizing, championing web analytics and sharing best practice across our global business units. My prior experience includes marketing strategy, business intelligence, competitive pricing and sales management.

I attended eMetrics Summit and am well connected with many web analytics practitioners. I am passionate about web analytics and see that as the career of choice for the rest of my life. I am also the author of the Super Web Analyst blog.

I graduated from Michigan Business School in 2004, with focus on marketing and general management. Outside work, I am active in the faith community and enjoy reading, writing or just spending time with my family.

Major contributions I will bring to Web Analytics Association and its membership

I believe the most important role for a Director to play is to help set the vision for WAA and develop strategic priorities based on that vision. To accomplish that, the Director needs to understand not only where the web analytics industry is going in terms of technical innovation, but also what’re the unmet needs from business/marketing perspectives.

As a core member in Dell’s web analytics community, I am at a unique position to see how Dell, as the # 1 e-commerce company implement cutting edge technology and use state of the art web analytics applications to drive online innovation and better serve its customers. What’s more impressive is we started with US first but expanded the program to our global business units fairly quick. Like the cliché goes, this is a journey and we are still at the beginning of the journey. I am excited about being part of the journey as I have the opportunity to really bring technology, vendor, consultant, people and process all together, with the ultimate goal to build the competitive advantage for Dell. Of course I am also experiencing the pains of politics, bureaucracy, organization silos, HIPPOs…you name it.

I believe my experience at Dell will enable me to give the board a balanced view so that we, as a team, can set right vision and strategic priorities for the association.

You should vote for me because…

If you a practitioner like me, you should vote for me because the BOD is typically being dominated by consultants and vendor representatives. They are great leaders in their companies and industries and I look forward to working with them on the board. However I think I can best represent your needs because I have the same needs as yours. It’s just that simple. If you are a vendor or consultant, I think you should still vote for me because I am your customer and don’t you like talk to your customer more often?

I have a passion about web analytics. I dedicate myself and focus my energy for the things I really love and web analytics is one of them. As a college student, I led a team with 13 students on a mountain climbing mission and we conquered the mountain with 24,700ft. To prepare for the trip, my team had to practice a whole year, in their spare time and we had to raise $10,000 fund by selling instant noodles, one pack at a time. During my four years at college, I attended and led three such missions and almost lost my life in one of them.

Of course that’s more than 10 years ago and I am not climbing anymore because my wife won’t allow me. Yet I am still a mountaineer fundamentally. I am curious, courageous and I like challenges. I have been doing different jobs but none of them like my current job really satisfying my curiosity and challenging me intellectually. So here I am. Like you, I have learned so much from this community and now I am ready to give back, with passion and dedication. I am willing to spend 10-12 hours a month, or whatever it takes to help bring WAA to the next level.

Where will the Web Analytics Association should be in the next two years?

I would like to see WAA to become the ultimate resource for the members to learn and grow in the next two years. WAA forum is a great place, probably more for beginners to ask “how to” questions. eMetrics forum is great but it is expensive (though well worthy) and only few times a year. What it is lacking is a continuous learning experience for practitioners like us. We have mastered the basis and we want to reach to the next level. We want to see more case studies and learn how we can implement similar solutions for our company. Webinar/podcast is a great medium but there is too much sales pitch. We need a better learning and sharing platform and I think WAA, as the only unbiased and credible professional association, can take up this challenge and fulfill the hungry needs.

In my process to apply for the business school six years ago, I co-founded a Chinese Professional Association where members can share their learning and network with each other, in their journey to apply for the business schools. Today Chinese Professional Network has become the destination for MBA applicants as well as MBA schools in China.

I believe WAA should start to establish a process and a platform where members from different industries and companies can share their best practices in a confidential and non-competitive environment. I know we have this need and I believe many other companies have the similar needs as well. If elected, I will work with other Board of Directors and committee members to define strategy, allocate resource and make this happen as quickly as possible.

What is the biggest challenge facing the digital marketing industry?

I can just speak from my personal perspective–I am not “guru” enough to predict anything in the future. I also learn from my experience that we should just focus on things we can control and let God do his works.

The first challenge I see is the emergence of multi-channel marketing and how web analytics can grow itself to become a true all-in-one solution for companies to analyze its marketing efforts, regardless where they are. I have seen some interesting articles but don’t believe we have cracked the code yet.

The second challenge is the risk of abusing “optimization”. The stories I have seen is we tend to optimize a certain page or even just some elements of the page and rush to declare success when we see a 5% jump in conversion. What we forget is the website is an eco-system and all elements of the site are all parts of the same body. Optimizing one part doesn’t mean the whole body is necessarily better off. We should be extraordinarily cautious when we design, test and implement any big changes and very thoughtful in calculating the impact on the overall business, not just the individual parts.

I think WAA can do many things to help its members overcome both challenges. Only the sky is our limit as we have so many passionate people like you and me. I realized this when I was in the WAW in DC last October.

If you are a member of the WAA, I hope you’ll support my nomination. 2009 is surely a tough year for all of us, and I hope you are holding strong, with a little help from WAA.

Sincerely yours,
Ed Wu

Hey Bryan, are you trying to kill all of us?

There is a lovely Sterne newsletter sit in my inbox when I came back to work. In the first item of that issue, he was trying to sell his buddy Bryan Eisenberg’s OnTarget service with a catchy title “Bryan Eisenberg Looks Over Your Shoulder”. He wrote:

[The following is from Sterne Measures newsletter Dec 15 issue, you can subscribe here http://www.targeting.com/

Ever sat down with Bryan Eisenberg and had him review the conversion quotient of your website? It's intimidating. In seconds, he can tell you seven things you know are true. They're obvious once he's said them. Well now they've found a way to downloaded Bryan's brain into a web server. They call it "OnTarget" and are rolling it out as a pay-per-month service.

So what's it do?
In his words it:

- Continually analyzes and uncovers challenges in over 100 different areas of your website, team, marketing
efforts, and visitors.
- Tells you what to do to fix it.
- Tells you what resources are needed and the estimated amount of time it will take them.
- Uncovers the reasons why visitors aren't being persuaded to do what you want them to and delivers approximately 40 hours worth of actionable recommendations and direction to your team per month on how to resolve it.
- Provides online survey & email campaign tools and reporting.
- Provides automatic visitor identification & reporting.
- Uncovers the effectiveness of marketing efforts and content.
- Provides competitive tracking and reporting.
- Provides lead qualification, scoring, and routing.

I call it Bryan Eisenberg on demand.

I call it way cool.

http://www.futurenowinc.com/ontarget_service.htm

[Sterne newsletter over]

All sounds good. Although it is very unlikely for us to subscribe such services, I couldn’t resist the temptation to click on that link. Knowing Bryan in person and reading his blogs all day long, I know when he has something to offer, it got to be great.

The landing page is well designed with similar information as Sterne summarized. I noticed there is a huge green button “Please contact me” screaming at me -good work, Bryan, you did what you are preaching.

Besides that green button, the second paragraph caught my attention:

[With OnTarget you get the benefit of analysis without hiring an analyst. It is better than simply analysis. You tell us what resources you have available to implement change so that you don't get recommendations that waste your time or resources.]

Get the benefit of analysis without hiring an analyst? Hmm, I am wondering if Bryan’s new year resolution is to kill all of us, poor web analysts. In this economy, I am pretty sure a lot of companies are interested in such strategy.

So I wrote Bryan an email with the exact question on the title “Hey Bryan, are you trying to kill all of us? ”

Bryan wrote back in a day and I really appreciate he took time to further elaborate his points as below:

[That is a great question and one I am glad you asked. Of course, I don't want to kill any analysts, I wish I could clone more of you though. Most organizations are having a difficult time dedicating resources, finding people and getting results with their optimization efforts. OnTarget is meant for those hundreds of thousands of organizations that aren't the Dells, Overstocks, or Amazons of the world.

You know Jim's and my passion and mission in starting the WAA was to create and educate analysts and bring them to the marketplace but while we have been successful, we haven't been able to keep up with demand. OnTarget is meant to bring cutting edge Persuasion Architecture trained analysts, leveraging our technology and help companies improve their conversion rates and operationalize optimization within the organization. Could we help companies like yours, the answer is yes, but we would only supplement and provide an outside perspective to your already capable staff. ]

I was half joking when I sent him the note but I am still glad to know that OnTarget is not meant to kill any of us. Without knowing much details about OnTarget, I believe it will be great tool, just because it’s from Bryan and his company. But from the bottom of my heart, I know a super web analyst is priceless.

And that’s you and me, baby!

eMetrics Summit 2008 Impressions and Reflections (Day 3)

The final day has finally come. To be honest, it has been quite exhausted in the last two days, bombarded by so many different ideas, vendor pitches, roundtable discussion and endless networking…My caffeine intake has been increased from two cups before I came here to … (don’t want to tell you, since my wife won’t be happy about it). Anybody thinks attending eMetrics summit as a vacation opportunity is seriously mistaken.

The “journey” message came along again with the first keynote from Kim Johnson, VP of Global Sales and Marketing Operations, Symantec Corporation. It is an amazing to see how she is able to manage all marketing segments in a centralized and integrated way, being able to balance the needs of the brand, the product lines and the sales organizations across the globe. For many large corporation, that’s simple a dream, probably never able to achieve though.

eMetrics Passport draw was the next on the agenda. Knowing that I won’t win anything, if the history is truly an indication of the future, I still went to each booth, having my passport stamped and prayed that miracle will happen. Of course it doesn’t. Tom-Tom GPS, $500 gas cards, 42” LCD TV all goes to our lucky winner, but not me. (crying aloud)

The next two sessions I attended both are focused on data mining, behavior segmentation and predicative analysis. Neil Mason talked about how to apply data mining and predictive analytical techniquest to get to grips with issues like visitor segmentation and understanding customers’ propensity to purchase. Gary Angel from Semphonic, continues to walk us through the process of doing behavior segmentations integrated with VOC data.

We talked about segmentation a lot. Avinash even goes to say the clickstream data and behavior analysis is useless without segmentation. But in most cases, segmentation we talked about are more “micro-segmentation”, just another name of different ways of slicing and dicing data. For example, don’t look at the aggregate site level conversion rate, but look at new visitors and repeating visitors. What Neil and Gary talked about are more “Macro-segmentation”: to look at all visitors, find variables that differentiate them from one group to the other, profiling them with demographic or voice of customer information and use the results segments to drive online marketing campaigns. This is the traditional definition of “segmentation” and it is the offline segmentation many companies have been doing for centuries. Neil and Gary are now taking them to the online world.

It’s hard to believe the summit has finally come to the end and the last 30 minutes belong to Mr. Jim Sterne, the godfather of web analytics. He highlighted the challenges ahead of us but also encouraged us to leverage the knowledge we have learned and the network we have built to create value for the organizations we serve and help the new comers in the community. So moved by his words and heart, I asked to take a picture with him like many others did.

My trip to the eMetrics Summit has come to close, now I need think about how to convince my boss to send me back to summit next year. The only way to convince him is to deliver higher value to my company. And I am confident that I can, because I have learned so much in the last three days, and I have got many friends and mentors that can help guide me along the way.

See you next year.

eMetrics Summit 2008 Impressions and Reflections (Day 2)

If the first day is more informational and inspirational, the second day is more instructional and practical. We descended from 3000 miles high C-level view to the ground level, web analyst view. The agenda is fully packed with many great sessions and if you are not sure what exactly you want to hear, you will be in a big trouble.

The day started with one of the best keynotes from NYTimes. Mr. James Robinson, Director of the Web Analytics presented “Web Analytics as a Value Driver Across Media”. It is simply great for two reasons 1) it gives us many real case study how they use web analytics data, to drive not only marketing but sales and operational activities 2) the “journey” message just resonates with each one of us. And it gives us great hope that if I am not there yet, I can get there eventually, if I can get the people, process and technology right.

Another great presentation is from Joel Megibow, VP of Customer Experience and Online Marketing from Hotels.com. If NYTimes gives us hope and let us see the light at the other end of the tunnel, Joel helps us find a way to get there. Every company in the planet keeps talking about customer experience, customer centric and other buzz words all day long, but Hotels.com is the one of the few, if not the only one I have seen so far really gets the idea. Joel the VP (not Joel the plumber) leads a team in the company with cross functional experts. They meet twice a week, essentially look at every customer comments, prioritize them, use the “Tivo for the web”–Tealeaf to reply the sessions, identify the real causes and go ahead to fix them, one at a time, no matter what it takes. The executive commitment, organizational structure, technical expertise Joel is able to pull together really make all the difference. He shared a story that he even personally called an angry lady, apologized to her and had the programmers to manually fix the issue for several days before they were able to patch the application. At the end of his presentation, Jim Sterne said, “Joel, you just won me as a customer of hotels.com”. Yes, and me too.

Joel Megibow, VP of Customer Experience and Online Marketing, Hotels.com

Bryan Eisenberg’s “Always be Testing” is the most practical of all. “Testing and Targeting” is not a new theme at all and there are more and more companies are starting to experiment with buttons, colors etc. With Google Website Optimizer, you can even do A/B testing or MVT for free. Bryan not only offer the concepts of “Persuasion Architecture”, but also a free book “Always be Testing”. The book is written with Google Website Optimizer in mind, but you can apply the concept and ideas regardless what testing tool you use. Of course, to add a personal fan fare, Bryan is so nice to sign the book. So here we go, I have the first book in my life signed by somebody I admired!

Bryan Eisenberg, FutureNow

Multivariate Testing Panel-eMetrics Summit 2008

(From Left to Right: Tim Ash, SiteTuners.com, Bryan Eisenberg, FutureNow Inc., Steve Daigneault, Amnesty International, Aaron graham, McAfee. Modorator: John Diorio from Google, not in the photo)

Jim Novo taught two very powerful concepts: relevance and confidence. He talked about how to use his famous past/last activity matrix to predict the future behaviors and use control groups to improve the confidence of the campaign. The concepts are so simple, yet powerful and surelly have great application.

Like any other conference, there are sessions making people fall sleep too. In eMetrics Summit’s case, presentations from vendors are normally boring, full of bragging and in some cases, maybe even attacking their competitions. Not fun, not insightful and not useful. Occassionally you’ll come across a presentation such as the one from HomeDepot. After listening to their presentation, I think their marketing department is better to be renamed as “ReportDepot” because there are so many reports they use and the presenter actually talked about each of them!

Last but not the least, today is the Wedesday, so there is Web Analytics Wedesday, right after the last presentation. I haven’t been to any of the Web Analytics Wedesday in past, but it’s full of fun, and you get free drinks and foods too. When Eric Peterson stood on a chair, he requested Jim Sterne to come close and they received a long wave of applause from everybody, just to thank them to create, promote and nurture this wonderful community, with their knowledge, skills and sacrific. They are our heros.

eMetrics Summit 2008 Impressions and Reflections (Day 1)

When I think of eMetrics summit, I often can’t help but remembering a great Chinese martial novel written by Mr. Yong Jin, 《The Legend of the Condor Heros》 In the end of the book, the top 5 Kungfu masters gathered at the summit of Mt. Huashan and competed to be the best of the best in the world. That has always been fascinating to me since I was a kid.

Well, now I just have that opportunity. The eMetrics summit almost gathered all the gurus in the web analytics field, Jim Stern, Eri Eric Peterson, Bryan Eisenberg, Jason Burby, you name it…To not just listen to their presentations (which you can do online with the increasing number of webinars), but also sit next to them, ask them questions, is the dream finally comes true, at least to me. Many web analysts including me, didn’t have any experience in this field before came to the job, had no ideas what it is or were scared about the page tagging but finally decided to choose this as their careers, partially if not fully are due to the amount of efforts these guys have put together, with eMetrics as a great example. And they are continuing to preach and evangelize the idea of “competing on web analytics” to build sustainable competitive advantage.

The day started with Jim Sterne’s keynote “Tough times call for tough measures” He highlighted the tough problem our economy now has, but argued that marketing optimization, especially online marketing optimization becomes even more important. He emphasized on “customer centric” and focused on optimizing the “buying process”, instead of the “selling process” which is company centric. The three great examples he gave are Willisam Hill Online Gaming, Ford Trucks and MEC Sport Goods, how those guys are able to use web analytics to change their business fundamentally.

The second keynote is Larry Freed from the Foresee Results. He spent quite a bit time criticizing/attacking 4Q survey that Avinash and iPerception recently launched. I guess 4Q probably has helped iPerceptions gain a lot more interests if not more business. However I think Mr. Freed failed to recognize the power of a simple and free tool and what it can do for the company and for the customer survey industry in general, including Foresee Results. I think just like Google Analytics does to search, if you can see how it helps your business, you spend more money on PPC. What 4Q will do is to help companies to see the value of an on-going and on-site customer survey tool and in turn, some of them will realize the limitation of the tool and invest in more complicated solutions like Foresee or iPerception. Personally I think I like what Foresee can do, but we have implemented iPerceptions. Another topic for discussion later.

Eric Peterson came to the stage and his topic is “Competing on Web Anaytics”. It’s funny to hear him talk about “Web Analytics is hard” and tomorrow Matt Langie from Omniture is going to talk about “Web Analytics is easy”. But that’s what guru does like the Kung Fu masters did on the summit of Huashan. They have to argue who is the right and combat with each other with their sword of words. It’s up to us to judge. I think he got the right point which is web analytics is hard and it takes a real discipline to manage the talent, process and technology. Often companies can get one of two right, but not all the three. However I feel his presentation, maybe Jim’s as well, are more for CxOs to hear than the “small dogs” like us, poor web analysts.

During the lunch, Interwoven did a test, asking each of us to guess which fragments of a MVT is the winner. There were 12 persons out of 300 guessed right for all the four fragments. I was one of the twelve but I wasn’t the one lucky enough to win the prize, wii! By the way, Interwoven’s Optimost “Adaptive Targeting” product sounds a very interesting one.

The afternoon started with Jason Burby’s presentation of “Monetizing Site Behaviors–Overview and Get Started”. To be honest, I am a little disappointed with what he talked about, really only a chapter from his book, very basic concept. I actually enjoyed more the presentation given by Jason Carmel, from ZaaZ as well in the following session. Mr. Carmel did a fantastic job to illustrate a problem we all have, which is the web optimization and user center design are both important parts of the whole ecosystem but we seldom talk to each other. I can’t even think of who is our User Center Design Architects at Dell and they probably don’t know who I am as well. Lesson learned and I’ll go back to find it out.

These are major sessions I attended. Overall I feel the presentations are informational, instead of instructional. I think many of us came to here and want to learn one thing or two that we can go back and implement them quickly in our business. If each presenter can bear this in mind and offer at least one practical idea that we can takeaway, that’ll be fantastic…

Maybe this is just the first day…Look forward to Bryan’s presentation tomorrow. He said he needs to adjust his presentation a little bit because he feels this group is more advanced than he thought. I asked if he needs to spend more time tonight tweaking the slides. He shrug his shoulder and said, ” I have over 6000 slides and I just have to pick some of them and fit them together”. Wow!

Oh, by the way, Google guys said Avinash will come tomorrow, annoucing some of their new products. Even we are not using their free tools such as google analytics or google website optimizer, but I still like the google guys. They are young, cool, have many nice goodies to give away and I got a t-shirt from them.