I had dinner with Gary Angel, his wife and daughters before returning to NYC Friday morning, and Gary also drove me to airport - and we discussed Emetrics on the way over to catch my plane.
I left Gary with a thought about a problem I'm seeing with large sites that replicate their structure across several countries - what I've found is that countries like China, Japan, Korea, India, have very different needs, from a task based navigation standpoint, than G9 (US and Europe, mostly). I wanted to know how Gary would solve that problem (if it's a problem at all). The large savings in replicating task based navigation may be cut down by the lack of applicability to the local country audience and their needs. If anyone can figure out the right approach to this problem, Gary Angel can. And then I got on the my Jet Blue flight back to NYC and slept the whole way - but it took me till tonight to recover fully from the activity this week generated - which engaged all my energy on many levels.
Gary wrote up his own impression of Emetrics here.
Referring to the combining of Functionalism (Gary came up with this system) and Persuasion Architecture (Bryan and Jeffrey Eisenberg) Gary had this to say:
"....I’d love to see the two approaches seriously combined – with Functionalism providing a measurement overlay and the Persuasion Architecture providing a creative overlay on the same site. It seems to me that combining the two would be deeply interesting and truly state of the art in the world of web analytics and marketing!"
I was impressed with Functionalism and having seen Persuasion Architecture over at Future Now offices in Brooklyn, recently, I think they could both be merged.
Earlier this week Gary blogged on Emetrics while it was still going on:
"..What’s the biggest news out of eMetrics? Is it the new version of Google Analytics or the fact that Eric Peterson is striking out on his own and setting up a strategic web analytics consultancy? For once, I’ll agree with Avinash’s 90/10 rule and pick the people side of the equation."
But here's the gem - the thing I relate most to:
"...Frankly, I prefer to keep our focus on being the best in world at deep-dive analysis. What makes a great analyst isn’t what makes a great process consultant."
Gary Angel brought up a point that was frank and bold about Peterson's announcement:
"..Honestly, when I heard the news from Eric, my biggest reaction was "Damn – why don’t you come work with us!" Sadly, I couldn’t talk him into it. I wish he had, and I hope we get a chance to work together going forward! Because while companies need expertise like ours, I’m realistic enough to know that they sometimes need other things as well. Frankly, I prefer to keep our focus on being the best in world at deep-dive analysis. What makes a great analyst isn’t what makes a great process consultant.
So is Eric competition to Semphonic? In a way he certainly is. But this is a big space with lots of room and lots of different needs and not anybody who’s really all that big. I think Eric has been and will be good for this space. Making it easier for companies to understand and use the value that only companies like Semphonic can deliver will help, not harm us. Does a rising tide really raise every boat? I suppose it might make it too rough for some. But if we do our job well, then I think having Eric driving businesses to be more serious and more committed to web analytics process will be all to the good. "
It's an open question how many analysts can go out and be independent consultants - like Avinash just did. However, Avinash, while he did strike out on his own - has an office in the GooglePlex (wish he invited me over there to take a look). I think Eric Peterson, because of his name, writings and industry connections, will be sought after. But I'm not so sure that this path is right for everyone in the field. Avinash and Eric are very well known, that's partly why it works ... at least, that's my opinion.
Finally, Gary blogged about the Google Analytics announcement - the interface update was kinda expected, and needed:
"...Not that Google’s release isn’t pretty big news. If Google was any other vendor, a release like this wouldn’t cause a ripple. But it’s Google and it’s free. And the growing threat of free software at the lower end of the market puts enormous pressure on the mid-range solutions and at least some pressure on the high-end solutions. Till now, I really wouldn’t have recommended GA to any company that actually wanted web analytics (as opposed to traffic reporting – in fact, I wouldn’t have recommended it even if you wanted convenient traffic reporting). The tool was basically unusable for serious work. Has that changed? To be honest, I don’t really know. Once we get a chance to work with it a bit I’ll have a better opinion. They certainly addressed some of the biggest weaknesses in the product – which can only be bad news for all the other vendors. Unless somebody can really trump GA in terms of usability, it’s beginning to look like there are only two options for vendors – play at the high end of the market or die."
I don't think it's changed, Gary. Google Analytics is a great, free tool, but for serious work on large sites, it doesn't cut it and probably never will. The main limitation of GA is the inability to compare more than one thing to another - whereas higher end analytics does give you the ability to make custom segmentation.
However, 99% of sites don't need custom segmentation - and that's the audience Google Analytics is for.
I suppose it does not hurt to bring up Eric Peterson's study again, and say that many companies, who are not process oriented, will fall on free tools and end up with ad-hoc reports that don't really move the business forward ... and very often, what these companies will use is Google Analytics - because it's free and it's powerful - if you don't need custom segmentation.
At the end of the day, Google Analytics is best used in conjunction with more powerful analytics platforms - and I have heard this - which are based to costs per pageview - Google Analytics can cut down the cost for ownership by collecting some metrics that are not dependant on segmentation which is a win-win for everyone.
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