Web analytics, web metrics, and how to use them to track and improve conversions

Just got here - a lot of well known people here but I decided not to speak to anyone yet.  After getting breakfast I listed to Rob Crumpler of Buzzlogic. 

As readers might recall, I asked for a Demo of Buzzlogic about 3 months ago - and was sopposed to get into the Beta Program.  Since then - nothing much happened.   I did not care for the way Rob Crumpler spoke - it seemed too artifical - like Buzzlogic is going to solve all your PR and Buzz issues - but I know it's not like that.  

In fact, I think Buzzlogic has the potential to give BrandPulse a run for the money (and there's probably a couple of other platforms similar to it)- and anything that gives Nielson a headache is a good thing in my book (since they're suing every analytics company that uses any of it's patents - at least, that's the way it seems to me).

In fact, I'd say that something about BuzzLogic reminds me, in a tangential way, of Eric T. Peterson's engagement score - just follow me here.   What Buzzlogic is trying to do is find the authorities - the people who really matter that are blogging or just talking about your company.  I believe, perhaps, that engagement might be a quality that goes with "authority".  If that's the case, Eric might have, without realizing it, defined an algorithm for determining authority - or a part of it.  Read  Eric T. Peterson's  post in detail to find out more.

I guess having BuzzLogic as part of the AO 100 makes sense - since the technology is disruptive.  More likely, if they become really all that disruptive, Nielson will just buy them out.

9:30 am – 10:15 am: CEO Showcase: Web & Blog Analytics & Research
        Rob Crumpler, CEO, BuzzLogic
        David Soskin, CEO, Cheapflights
        Amar Anand, CEO, eTIMEisMONEY
        Brian Magierski, CEO, Kalivo
        Benno Wasserstein, CEO, Box UK
        Demo Review by Industry Experts:
        Chris Fralic, Partner, First Round Capital
        Julia Hood, Editor-in-Chief, PRweek
        Brian Kelly, Partner, Manatt, Phelp & Phillips

Ok, I did not pay much attention to David Soskin, CEO, Cheapflights which seems like it used some analytics (but I did not catch what he said).

I spoke to Amar Anand, CEO, eTIMEisMONEY on Monday night at AlwaysON NYC, he's in NYC so I may interview him later.  I like Amar's way of speaking and his platform of making time into money and has a module for Bloggers to legitimately monetize their blogs.  eTimeisMONEY sells time and there's a commission on the time sold on the site.   It looks like a pretty good platform and he's launching today.

Brian Magierski, CEO, Kalivo is a platform for marketers that has a "listener" which crawls the internet and picks up relevant content and allow the marketer to respond to it.   It sounds to me like Kalivo has a nice way of categorizing what's happening in context to the what the marketer cares about - which might give it an edge; I like the analytics, based on what I can see.

You an even focus in of the type of Blogger platform (ie: WordPress bloggers talking about iPhones - and also categorizes conversations based on importance - and you can then interact with those sources - a very nice feature!)

ClickDensity ( I think it was Benno Wasserstein, CEO, Box UK  presented) is really presenting a standalone heatmap program that, while is fancy to look at, is not really much different than what most upper tier web analytics platforms provide in some form or another.  I like that each click on a page also includes the time spent on the link (page).  However, there are segmentation capabilities in ClickDensity - more how people react on the page (how quickly a visitor, on average, click on a link of the page).  It's not a replacement for your regular Web Analytics - it supplements it.

There were also 3 panelists that just came on the stage - Chris Fralic, Partner, First Round Capital, Julia Hood, Editor-in-Chief, PRweek and Brian Kelly, Partner, Manatt, Phelp & Phillips.

I think what the panelists/analysts above liked was the ability to know what the blogosphere is saying and interacting with it (as well as the attractive pricing).  The analytics seemed more intuitive - drawing a box around all this unstructured data in a visual way.   But the panelists want to know how the analytics here really work - and which one is better and why.   ETimeisMoney is also liked by the Panelists - they think it's a good direction to go. 

Anticipating issues rather than just being reactive.  But the Panelists think it's all about Google - Google dominates the conversation even though they are not, in away way I'm aware of, present at this conference.

Well, that's it for this session.