At the morning panel at Xchange here at the Ritz.

TECHNOLOGY
The first question came from Mark Maletesta, a former coworker, when I worked at IBM.

The next came from WebTrends about Social Network Analysis.

Is there going to be a war between Yahoo! analytics (IntexTools) and Google Analytics?

Megan Burns was asked by Dylan from Intuit about getting Web Analytics up the food chain to C level Execs? She said it is not about data and keeping track of the hidden costs of Web Analytics.

Eric Peterson noted that many people spending 80% of time on reports no one read. Megan was asked to give a example, and did. Getting attention from a C level exec is the first hurdle, then extrapolating.

What should you be looking for in a Web Analyst? Passion, experience and communication. More experiened people who are focusing on what you did with the tools you use, not so much the tools, themselves.

Is the role of an analyst to just clean data? Or is it to make data available more widely.

PROCESS
Where does WA belong in an organization? Compatacy center for Web Analytics with a corporate sponser.

Cross channel marketing and corporate peformance strategy with a Web Analytics Compatancy center. But john Lovitt says “let chaos reign” unless your company is ready to do it right.

A question about reporting was actually one I found I had further questions (and an agenda) focusing on getting rid of reports we can’t provide insight on.

Is analytics an accelorater? (look, I am writing on an iPhone …. Need I say more)?

Eric sited a case of using Visual Sciences to detect fraud in paid search campaigns resulting big refund checks from Google and Yahoo.

Dilligence and small gains over time is one way to measure the ROI of web analytics data.

Is Web Analytics a Universal Gateway Drug?

What have people used web analytics to show? Often it’s just showing traffic numbers which justified their jobs. Often, analytics is used as a focusing mechinism.

Do web analytics right?

Minimum 250K according to John Lovitt (he did not say if this is a yearly or monthly spend).

End of industry panal.