I interviewed Robbin Steif of LunaMetrics today; Robbin will be speaking at the Emetrics Summit, in a couple of weeks, and my interview with Robbin Steif is the first that I’m doing before the summit. 

Where do I begin….how about a picture of Robbin Steif.

Robbin is CEO of LunaMetrics, a Web Analytics firm that is located in Pittsburgh where her firm is busy handling the Analytics and SEO/SEM needs of many clients.

Robbin got started in the IT Industry working for IBM in the Direct Response group (she recalls the telephone number  of IBM Direct as 1-800-IBM-2468); IBM Direct took phone orders based on Direct Response advertising before the IBM.com website was created in 1993-1994 (this is something I actually know about).  Here’s some information about Robbin Steif that describes Robbin’s background..

"In a former life, Robbin was CFO for MAYA Design, a high-tech firm that specializes in usability for complex technical issues, including websites. She has also owned and sold a national e-tailer, Send Me No Flowers, which sells gifts by direct mail and e-commerce/e-marketing. Her career began in IBM’s Direct Response division.

Robbin is a graduate of Harvard College and the Harvard Business School. She is a PA Best 50 Women in Business winner, co-chairman of the Web Analytics Association’s marketing committee, and is a frequent speaker on the topic of website merchandising and e-marketing.

Robbin sees Web Analytics as a 4 pronged stool with Finance and Math as 2 of the 4 prongs (I don’t remember what the other two prongs are).  She sees her self on having most of the prongs of the stool, but still growing, evolving into it.  

I asked Robbin what Web Analytics packages she uses on her own sites.  Turns out she uses both Net Tracker (Internet provider provides) and  Google Analytics.  Since many of Lunametrics clients use Google Analytics it made sense to use for the Lunametrics blog.

One thing I found unusual about the Lunametrics site was the money back guarantee on most of the pages and a free 1 hour site assessment for conversion rates and overall site performance.  I don’t know that one hour is enough time to find out all the major problems, but it’s a generous offer and does generate some business for Lunametrics.    Robbin also plans to update her Lunametrics site and blog at one time in the near future.

Robbin Steif’s presentation at the Emetric Summit will be about Marketers are from Mercury and Programmers are from Pluto - or how to market to IT Professionals and will take place at the end of the conference on Wednesday afternoon, October 18th.

Data Capture & Integration 7
Marketers are from Mercury and Programmers are from
Pluto: Marketing for Technologists
Robbin Steif, CEO, LunaMetrics

You spent six months evaluating packages.You’ve got it installed and pages tagged, events created, eVars established.You’re up and running — except that now, management wants decisions based on the data, and you don’t know where to start. In addition to a brief tour of KPIs, this will include a guide to marketing analysis you should do on a regular or ad-hoc basis to understand who your best customers are, what kind of loyalty you have, where you should invest more marketing dollars and where you should pull back, and how to turn your analytics into actionable data.

Robbin is also be moderating the Data Capture & Integration Track at the Emetrics Summit; here’s the overview:

Data Capture & Integration Track

Data capture, cleansing, integration, reporting–there’s a great deal of technical ground to cover before you even start to realize website ROI. And did we mention cookies, proxies, firewalls and CRM systems?

Data capture, cleansing, integration - there’s a lot to know about those kind of issues in Web Analytics, esp cleaning the data - a lot of times you have to get rid of a lot of garbage data to get just what you want - clearly Robbin Steif is an expert which is why you should attend her session(s) if your going to the Emetrics Summit and check out her Lunametrics site and blog when you get a chance.  

There’s a lot of depth about Robbin Steif and I could not cover it all here - I do interviews mostly from memory with some notes - but if I conveyed that Robbin is an Web Analytics expert who who is continuing to grow along with the Web Analytics / Web Metrics field, I’ve done a good interview.

We closed by talking about the future of Web Analytics (I asked her about this - it’s one of my questions) and she thought Web Analytics is still in it’s infancy - that we need to make Web Analytics something that is built into applications where most people can access the power of it rather than the small number of businesses that do so now.  In fact, Robbin felt that we have barely touched the surface of how many sites need Web Analytics.

I brought up that while I’d like to see Web Analytics become more integrated with websites and the web creation process - I don’t wish to see our work become a commodity, much as Unix Systems Admin became a commodity for me around 2000-2001.  Robbin added, we don’t have to worry about that as there’s so many other facets to Web Analytics that we can go into - that even if what we do now becomes a commodity in the future - we’ll move on to something higher in the food chain - because there’s so many things to work on and improve.  Good point and with that, my interview with Robbin Steif is over.