Greg Dowling – Senior Analyst – JupiterResearch
Data Integration – shows that lack of internal resources, systems or data incompatibility, lack of a unifying data intensifier.
Acquisitions – what’s in it for me as a web analyst. IE: Core-metrics acquisition of IBM Surf-aid – allows for tighter integration with Web-sphere.
Reach out to the vendors for help.
Note: You’re stuck with whatever vendor relationships you’re locked into.
Bill Glassman - Research Director - Gartner
ROI - media sites have a different KPI than Service Delivery business your KPI's will be different.
Before you make a change you need to understand what the ROI will be once the change in Web Analytic tools will bring your business.
A lot of people are stuck on the web metrics level (top 10 pages) where as much fewer are at level 2 (behavior optimization) – path optimization – and then to level 2 (E-Marketing – segmentation) etc.
A lot of people are missing the value – the KPI – the value to your users; and IT should be brought into the process. IT should be involved in establishing governance. Treat Web Analytics as a cycle of activity.
A lot of people are missing the value – the KPI – the value to your users; and IT should be brought into the process. IT should be involved in establishing governance. Treat Web Analytics as a cycle of activity.
Megan Burns, Senior Analyst, Customer Experience, Forrester Research, Inc.
Multi Channel Analytics - why does that matter? Trends in cross channel design - the Analytics Gap.
Why does Multichannel matter? Web does not exist in vacuum - relationship of the web to the call center. Even if all you own is the web, measurement on either side of the house. We have some data that shows the better experiences customers have - are the most expensive for the vendor to supply.
The relationship between these channels is an important thing to understand. Direction of where we want to go. Cross Channel review methodology - and what about the in between them - customers interact with multiple channel.
Cross Channel Map - how our customers live? We at Forrester have been thinking this way for a while but today there's not way to measure it - we will get there - and unfortunately - the technology is a big issue - but it's also a business challenge - but it's not the technology that's the biggest problem - it's organizational channels that interfere that stop people from achieving cross channel integration.
Overall customer experience is a problem - in many companies there is no one person that owns an entire process. This is the way that we need to start thinking about it.
What is the data that's missing from your database - it's Web Data - but they don't know how to get that data - it's not easy to bring the data together and take a big picture view.
From a tools perspective - it's also important to think this way because a lot of companies are not spending on tools as much - more on people and process - and the tool vendors need to have offerings so when companies want to spend on tools - there are cross channel tracking tools available - which don't exist today.
Questions:
1.Do any vendors have a leg up on business intelligence integration tools?
Bill Glassman: all the vendors are aware - BI tools are bad at path analysis - but Unica product is better in path integration.
Greg Dowling: tool itself is not the answer - it's a piece by piece thing - they need an open data structure - as far are turnkey tools - that's just beginning.
Megan Burns: in a lot of cases you first need to figure out what is the right data to pull out - and that's causing somewhat of a bottleneck (my work).
2. Do you see Google Analytics becoming a category killer?
Greg Dowling: GA has a long way to go before becoming a category killer - but they are a good tool for small businesses and as tool to gather initial insights - but deep integration, segmentation - ie: corementrics using live triggers to start of a targeted email campaign - are absent. As a starting point - it's fantastic.
Bill Glassman: GA is fantastic and raised the bar and it challenges the rest vendors to go to the next step.
Megan Burns: I agree and don't have a lot to add, it's a good thing and generates more Web Analysts.
3. Death of the page, AJAX, WEB 2.0, it seems to me the vendors are in danger of being a generation behind the actual pages - how does all that complexity get reflected?
Megan Burns: Everyone is talking about this - the entire vendor community is thinking about this and what we have just the basics and we need to go beyond that. People don't want to go out and do these things before they go out and do it.
Greg Dowling: At Scholastic - we had 100's of interactive Flash games and developers wanted to know every click on each of these games - Rich Media tracking - there are user refinements that - and right now you need scripts to track every action. Omniture focused on Rich Media and Web 2.0 applications - and it came up pretty quick.
Bill Glassman: AJAX and Rich Media tracking - will the vendors track this - you bet they will - as they'll make money on every click. But you have to first figure out what the value is and then find out the way to track it.
3. What is click and how is it defined?
Bill Glassman: More important issue is to have a standard around tagging and the syntax is different between the vendors.
Greg Dowling: Data collection methodologies and definitions - need to come from the Web Analytics Association and from you.
Megan Burns: We can get past what is accurate - there are pros and cons and as long as we understand what they are - just pick one - because we will never get past which one is best.
4. How do we come up with a standard definition of Unique Visitors, Visits- etc. Jason Burby - ZAAZ - Moderator. - talk to Angie Brown in the standards committee of WAA.
5. Cross Channel Tracking - if the data is being tracked what are we dong about the security of that data.
Bill Gassman: There will be in an event in the future where there will be a security breach and (ie: SalesForce.com) - we have to get used to trusting these vendors with the data before some big problem happens when we can then deal with it. The outsourcing has been very beneficial - esp smaller companies - it is a concern .
Megan Burns: All these things are value judgments - and I talk with people in financial transactions companies if they are concerned? None have said they are because it's not as if the account numbers and highly private transactions are being shared this way.
6. I develop tools to take advantage of the lack of good web analysts and I have seen that what vendors say (they can take clients to level 5) when in reality they can't get past level 1 or level 3. What is being done to address this?
Answer: we need a lot more consultants out there.
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