eMetrics appreciation

Back from a fantastic trip in San Francisco for eMetrics. Catching up on emails and work. But I thought I should share my impressions while things are fresh in my mind.

Ok, I must admit I might be biased... as I presented on the Industry Insight day and was moderating one of the track on Tuesday.

BUT... It was an amazingly productive conference.

Way back then...

Some years ago (well... many years ago... I'm getting old!), each Internet World conference brought something new to the forefront of the industry. Remember "push technology", VRML, the early days of streaming? Without any coordination, "the industry" was moving in a direction. Although we can now laugh at some of those concepts, they nevertheless changed the face of the industry and how we use the web today.

The same pattern is happening at eMetrics. Without any preliminary coordination, there are some things setting the path for the future.

Testing & beyond

I noticed this year eMetrics was a lot about the value of "testing". Bringing the "testing" culture and the right tools to do it in order to optimize and achieve success. Contrary to most other field of expertise, the Web allows us to deploy quickly and continually improve. You don't want to do that with your car, your house or the space shuttle... but with the web it's how it should be. Most companies don't understand that and still impose strict project cycles, those who understand are not only demonstrating huge benefits.

From IT, to marketing, to business

The other outcome, highlighted during the Industry Insight afternoon round table and in Thomas Davenport's great keynote is the transition from web analytics to business analytics. Just like the web, web analytics started in IT, then marketing found out about it and took control. We are there now. But winning businesses understand the value of the web and have optimized some of their most important business processes around it. We are maturing to a level where we won't only talk about using web analytics for marketing optimization, but we will be talking about analytics for business processes optimization and strategic level changes.

Being a tutor of both web analytics and business process analysis classes, it's obvious to me there are very strong benefits in leveraging analytics to optimize business processes.

What will be this fall highlight? Next year?

Industry Insight

Jim Sterne told me the experience of the Industry Insight was very positive and will be renewed this fall in Washington: leading experts sharing their view of the current and future state of the industry. I will be there to bring some hard core data about the vendor market shares and exchange with fellow analysts.

Web analytics is EASY, Easy easy...

If we were shouting out load "WEB ANALYTICS IS EASY" while standing at the top of a cliff we would just hear back "easy, easy, easy..."... That's the kind of reference well known blogger, author, speaker and thought leader Eric Peterson used when referring to a recent post of Matt Belkin and myself (although not spelling out my last name correctly and not linking to my point of view here and here...) when talking about the "echo chamber effect". His statement:

You say something for so long, and your buddies all repeat it, that eventually you ignore the reality of the situation and begin to believe something that is clearly not true.

Ouch! That's a constructive comment! Thank you Eric, you just enlighten me. I was lost, you showed me the way. You've been touring the world warning us all that "web analytics is hard". We've heard you load and clear. It must be the absolute truth.

Is there a conversation going on?

Since you didn't post my comment and didn't reply to my email, I'll share my thoughts here instead. (Sadly... it vaguely reminds me of another conversation you had with another thought leader.)

I haven't been in web analytics for as long as you, that's true. But I still have enough experience with complex projects to know that starting up with a preconceived idea that it's "hard", even impossible from what you seem to infer, is a sure way to fail. There's even a whole book on that topic called "The setup to fail syndrome".

Several years ago it was ERP systems, then CRM, now it's web analytics... lots of companies failed, those who succeeded gained a strong competitive advantage. With the economic trouble ahead, we're heading straight into "competing on analytics". You know it, you said it yourself, deploying the tool is just a fraction of the solution: changing the corporate culture is the real challenge. If we say ERP, CRM or web analytics is hard... who is it really helping?

Ok, let's say it's hard, what's next?

In a way, I agree with your statement and the comment my friend Jacques Warren posted on your blog: web analytics is not an easy endeavor. If we want to play with semantic, here's some food for thought:

• Human nature and leader bias: ask anyone "is your job hard?", regardless of what their actual job is. You are very likely to hear them say "Hell yes!" and they will go on explaining why THEIR job is so hard. In a survey, this is called leader question bias. Inferring a state of mind in the question itself.
• What is "hard"?: this is a clearly a qualitative value, as human being (and think God we are in a democracy), everyone is entitled to his opinion. And my opinion of something "hard" is when being faced with the unknown and unexpected, mapping uncharted territories where no one else ever succeeded.
  - Landing a man on the moon: yes, that was hard.
  - The first successful heart transplant: yes, hard...
  - Ending hunger in the world: this IS hard
  We know what it takes to succeed in web analytics, and some companies are progressing amazingly well in that space. Again, how is constantly coming back saying "web analytics is hard" helping?
  

"Web analytics is a process easy"

Why am I saying that? You are the guru, you certainly have a lot of followers (certainly much more than I do!) and that's ok. I'm pretty sure I heard somewhere that "web analytics is a process", heck! to claim a copyright on "web analytics business process" is a pretty strong statement (for those who wonder, check the page footer on WebAnalyticsDemystified.com) so if someone knows how to make it easier, it should be you! Why do you keep on saying it's hard?

Aren't we defining processes to make complex tasks easier?

Web Analytics is a process like any others

Business Process Analysis implies understanding & improving a collection of interrelated tasks which solve a particular issue. Nothing new here... Most businesses face complex and "hard" processes, and the way to make them "easy" is by decomposing them into smaller sub-processes until they are manageable. I strongly believe that bringing the web analytics culture (along with the tools and educating people about it) is not "hard" when you set goals and expectations accordingly.

I prefer to think positively and see every challenge as an opportunity to learn and move forward.

I prefer to act and make web analytics easier to understand when I tutor or when I speak at a conference; when I work with clients to help them learn & understand.

I prefer to think web analytics is easy because "we can do it".

Let's end this rant with a question: Who does it serve to run around saying web analytics is hard? How is it constructive?

(Let's have a beer... or several... at eMetrics!)

Credit: drawing by Aaron J. Louie

Upcoming dinner with Avinash Kaushik & Mitch Joel

A little anecdote: The first time I met Mitch Joel was at a dinner preceding the eMetrics Breakfast a couple of months ago, along with Jim Sterne and Andrea Hadley. I knew who he was: one of the greatest evangelist in the social media/web 2.0 space. He obviously didn't know who I was... But still, when we met again this week at eMetrics Toronto he perfectly remembered about the "link love" from a post I did weeks ago.

We didn't have much time to chat, but here's what I find amazingly interesting: we met face to face only once and despite having thousand of readers and followers in the online social media space, what might be the greatest reward of all is when you can meet and talk face to face with great minds such as Mitch and Avinash Kaushik.

And the opportunity to have dinner with both of them is coming up on April 16th (note: limited seating/pay your own bills). Of course, I quickly sent an email to Mitch to be there!

Like many others, I exchanged emails and blog comments with Avinash several times (how can he find the time to do all of that!). He is even helping me out as an "angel adviser" for WASP and providing invaluable feedback and advices. The first time I met him was at eMetrics San Francisco last year. I was chatting with him while the new version of Google Analytics was being announced on the stage. He was excited like a little child. That's the second greatest thing in our field: we love what we do, we're passionate... we're just like little boys playing Lego :)

Home sweet home: my journey through the storm of the century

Continuing my adventures on my way back from the Omniture Summit (check my previous post about "Continental Airline, where's your purple cow?" for the beginning of this entertaining journey).

Being a five star customer...

If I had absolutely wanted to go to Quebec city from Newark I would still be sitting in the airport and starting to smell like... well... cow...

The plane from Newark to Ottawa was scheduled for 8:00pm, 9:00pm, 10:00pm, 11:00pm. After waiting for several hours in line, I got boarding passes to Ottawa instead of Quebec city. I can tell you, spending days in an airport is an amazing way to learn tricks about traveling. When you are on standby, your boarding pass will show with "STBY" where the seat number should be. Mine showed "*****" but not because I was upgraded to a Five Star customer... The "very comprehensive" agent told me she "didn't understand" that according to sales I had a seat, but according to the seat map there was no room left. Yeah right... I was oversold. Why didn't she simply tell me that?

I also learned that if you leave the security area and your boarding pass says 8:00pm and it's now 8:30pm, you won't be able to get back through security even if the flight was delayed to 9:00pm... Go figure... Someone got trapped "outside" and they had to go through all the bureaucracy to get back.

A nice couple ended up being oversold because somehow they went through security and even registered their luggage, but they supposedly didn't confirm their seats. How could this happen?

We have a plane, but no crew and no pilot

Must have bit a hell of a storm because they lost crews and pilots! When planes made their way to the gates, we often heard messages saying "we're sorry for the delay, the plane is here, but we're waiting for the crew to arrive, we don't know where they are". Wow! I thought the Bermuda Triangle was a legend!

Feeling lucky

Finally made it to Ottawa, landed safely. And of course, as I expected, my luggage didn't follow. I was certainly not alone because there were dozens of bags turning around, some piled up beside the conveyor, and a dozen people wondering if they should just grab one of the bag and win a complete new wardrobe :)

Filed the "A32, four copy form" for lost luggage...

During the long wait we had time to make plans... Most people wanted to go to Montreal (about 2 hour drive from Ottawa, and another 3 hours to Quebec city). Some people managed to get lifts from family and helped others. I ended up renting a car and made my way to Montreal with another person, then continued the long trip to Quebec city. At least that part went well, road conditions were fine and we chatted all the way to Montreal. Must admit however that staying awake was getting very challenging...

Welcome to Quebec city

6:00am, had about 4 hours sleep over the past 3 days. Drove straight to the airport, gave back the keys and went inside to inquire about my luggage. Forget it... Now, where's my car? Most of the cars are covered in snow, alarm panic button on the key chain is quite useful in those case! Took me another hour to get out of there... Arrived home just in time to cross my wife going to work, canceled a meeting today and went to bed.

Home sweet home

Woke around noon and had a first glimpse at my front and backyard: snow banks are up the roof.

Tried to call back to check where my luggage were... guess what? They can't find my claim file!

Now let's do some work to pay all those additional expenses...

Continental Airline, where's your purple cow?

It's a long way home... I was supposed to do Salt Lake - New York - Quebec City. I read on a friend's blog and my wife told me this storm was a major one. In the Quebec City area, people got stuck on the highway for several hours and snowmobiles were called to the rescue, highways were closed, and of course, the Montreal and Quebec airports too...

Plane late in Salt Lake, no luck in New York, I will eventually get to Quebec city.

(looks like being tired after a 3hour sleep doesn't stop me from being poetic! In fact, maybe it even help!)

The result is a cascade of canceled and delayed flights, crews and pilots trying to reach their "port d'attache" without success. People sleeping everywhere, the lucky ones on benches, the others directly on the floor.

Continental Airline, where's your purple cow?

It's not the first major snowstorm of the century, heck, airports and airlines are supposed to be prepared for terrorism and other unexpected events. What I witnessed is a very poor execution, a lack of sensibility and for sure, someone who will avoid at all costs getting back on a Continental plane. What was wrong?

• Emergency situation: staff those darn counters to answer clients questions. 3 out of 5 agents simply walked away even if there was about 100 people waiting and a flock of others coming in. Two others came back about 2 hours later...
  
• Disaster recovery: the boarding pass printer breaks, how can it take close to an hour to get another one? Don't tell me there was no alternative!
• Vouchers: didn't had breakfast because I ran to take a flight, simply to find out it was canceled. Waited for 6 hours in line to see an agent, we know my flight (if I'm lucky) will be at 8:00pm, 9:00pm, but nope... can't get two vouchers right away. It's limited to one at a time, sorry buddy, you'll have to wait in line again to get your voucher!

What they could have done? As Seth Godin would put it, "this means you have to toss out everything you know and do something "remarkable" to have any effect at all". Continental will certainly be a long lasting memory event, but not a positive one!

• Busses! Doh! Planes were simply canceled, bumping everyone else on standby or booking toward other airports that are as filled as this one is simply useless. Montreal is not that far (6 hour drive): charter buses and get going! Even if we had to pay for it, making the arrangements would be highly appreciated. There is no reserved seats for three days, so they are simply hoping people will get so pissed they will find other ways of getting home.
  
• Empathy: why not put bottled water and snacks near the waiting lines? I waited about 6 hours... babies were crying, elderly people were dazing blindly at an hypothetical place that now only exist in their head: home.
• Communicate: instead of repeating over and over the same (often false) stories, why not stand up and simply tell it to everyone. Why not pick a drywall and write the latest status: "Montreal: next reserved seats on Tuesday, here's the alternatives: ...". Why not tell the 100 or so people waiting in line to group by destination to facilitate communication?
• Be fair: a lady was told there was absolutely no room but a few minutes later another person got a seat. A lady just in front of me got a reserved seat to Quebec city but I was told there was already 15 people on the standby list!

I got no other clothes, but I got my laptop and wireless access... stay tuned for the rest of this nightmare!

Free book from cScape: are you a winner or a loser?

A couple of weeks ago I was contacted by cScape because they found my blog post, “Bubble-burst 2.0”, of interest for a new book entitled “Winners and Losers in a Troubled Economy”. Authors Richard Sedley and Martyn Perks provide an outstanding (and free!) 80 pages book on engagement and how digital media, when used correctly, can not only help businesses today but especially when the economy hits the fan. The book is à propos those days, but it’s also an excellent introduction to online marketing and customer engagement. The topics covered include:

1. New marketing: the old ways will not do
2. The changing face of the customer
3. Creating an online customer engagement strategy
4. How to create your online customer engagement success
5. The tactics for creating a customer engagement strategy
6. Measuring online customer engagement
7. What role can digital media play during a recession?

I’m honored to have made my small contribution alongside people like Jim Novo, Eric Peterson and points of views from Foviance, Satama and several others. For me, it’s a reward for growing from my roots in IT and getting a more strategic and business oriented professional profile.

Download “Winners and Losers in a Trouble Economy”

Download the “2008 Annual Online Customer Engagement Survey”

Omniture SiteCatalyst 14 released

A few days ago I was ranting about web analytics being too marketing centric. Frankly, there's no reason to use Omniture for marketing optimization... you should use Omniture for optimizing your online business as a whole!

It has become a tradition for Omniture to release new versions during the Omniture Summit and this year is no exception! Those who logged to their SiteCatalyst account today were in for a little treat from Omniture: SiteCatalyst v14 is now available.

The interface

Nicer graphs don't make for better decisions, but usability and communicating just the right information in the right way makes a big difference. The Omniture SiteCatalyst v14 interface is radically different. There is a bunch of little features that makes this version very easy to use: quick navigation, reorganized menu, easier date selection, access to bookmarks, improved dashboards, a crisp reporting interface with more charting options, etc. (click on the picture at right for a larger view)

Extensibility

Custom variables, calculated metrics, custom reports and dashboards, amazingly limitless segmentation with Discover and of course, a powerful API with both SOAP and Excel compatibility are what put SiteCatalyst in a different category than your other free entry-level web analytics tool.

Omniture was amazingly fast at integrating some of the WebSideStory products. What used to be the search solution from WSS is now Omniture SiteSearch. The CMS is also rechristened as Omniture Publish. Offermatica and TouchClarity are now found under "Test & Target" and there a new integrated survey which is the result of their Instadia acquisition. And, by the way, SearchCenter is now at version 3!

Video or Flash?

v14 includes native support for Flash and Flex, as well as Media Player, QuickTime and RealPlayer video engagement reports and milestone tracking. It also support for Flex 2 and Flash 9 applications.

Web Analytics is not a one men (or women) show

There a bunch of additional consideration for teamwork and report distribution, from the new Distribution Manager to contextual help and community support built throughout the product.

When blogging can kill you

(Update: I incorrectly understood M.Tilley had a blog himself, but it's rather other people who used blogs to rant against his business and him personally. I have made some changes to reflect this position. However, I don't think it significantly change the outcome: someone killed himself partly because of blogging...)

Paul Tilley was an executive at an ad agency. People used the freedom of blogging to foster communication and feedback about the industry and ad agencies, from clients and employees alike. That eventually led to open criticism of M.Tilley's management style and decisions: that may have killed him. Maybe not directly, but it certainly contributed to a chain of events that led to his death.

It's a sad story, please allow me to quote Andy Beal:

...stop and consider the personal psychological harm our words might have on an individual. While it’s easy for us to post our scathing criticisms. we’re often desensitized to the harm we inflict–simply because we’re miles away, safe behind our web browser.

I didn't know M.Tilley, in fact I never heard of him before. But I'm nevertheless sadden by this story. It's at the opposite spectrum of the idea I shared several months ago in my post about "the lonely life of bloggers" where I critiqued a book called "Blogosphere":

...blogs are made by human beings, and are read by human beings... how can this be unreal?

New business models: wrap up from InfoPresse day

Yesterday I attended a conference entitled "New business models: Google and revolutionary management" organized by InfoPresse. Very interesting and thought provoking.

(Note: You will see that the next logical step from those presentations is to come at the InfoPresse day about web analytics where I will talk about "Elements of a successful web analytics program" on April 16th, along with Jacques Warren and Avinash Kaushik.)

Bernard Girard on Google management

M.Girard is the author of a book on Google management. M.Girard highlighted some interesting facts about the "ecosystem" of Google: lower legal constraints, a closer relationship between universities and companies, the availability of venture capital and business angels and cultural differences that made, and still make Google, a fertile ground for a different management style.

Whereas management capability is typically limited by the cognitive capacity of a company manager, Google triumvira composed of Page, Brin and Schmidt has proven to be successful. Girard compared Apple's Steve Job to Michael Angelo, working with a team but getting all the glory for the result, Microsoft's Bill Gates closed and controlling practices, and Google's multiplication of experiment approach.

Let's face it: free stuff, frequent release and availability of beta versions, open architecture and incremental evolution are all fine. But what strikes me as being most interesting is the focus on user behavior analysis rather than spending a lot of time watching out the competition. It's observing how user interact, use and think of new ways of using their application rather than doing long and often biased marketing research. That's sounds like a melody to my ears :)

Stéphane Gauvin on the Social Web

M.Gauvin is professor of marketing at Laval University and closely involved with the eBusiness MBA. An amazing and fun speaker who mixed university style "rigueur" and provoking messages that brought laughs from the crowd. There was a lot of highly interesting facts in his presentation: web penetration is saturating at around 70% (far from the >98% of television), effective usage is around 50%, but the core of the message was that so called social media is not the panacea that some people would like us to think. There's a noticeable slowdown in Facebook and the Twitters, MySpace, Blogger, Flickr and other social sites are eclipsed by Youtube amazing growth.

James Surowiecky on the Wisdom of Crowds

The Wisdom of Crowds as become a best seller for basically saying that so called "experts" are not so great... and it's wiser to tap into the diversity and amazing power of statistical significance of a correctly sampled group. Numerous examples reinforced the concept, presented in a way that makes perfect sense and didn't need to go in the methodological aspects of statistics. The keys to The Wisdom of Crowds are:

1. diversity of opinion,
2. independence of members from one another,
3. decentralization,
4. skills at aggregating opinions without interfering.

As stated in the editorial review on Amazon "The diversity brings in different information; independence keeps people from being swayed by a single opinion leader; people's errors balance each other out; and including all opinions guarantees that the results are "smarter" than if a single expert had been in charge."

#1 key takeaway from the day

"Listen, observe, measure... measure... measure..."

Is Web Analytics too marketing centric?

Last night I was sharing some sushi with fellow web analyst and freelance contractor Jacques Warren, chit chatting about web analytics and other things in life... well, mostly web analytics. Jacques is a strong believer of integrating web data with enterprise systems (see "The Big Integration"), and I'm a strong believer of business process optimization through proper use of Internet, and more specifically, web technologies. That being said, I'm no marketing expert, I'm just a tech guy who got out of his shoes to be more business oriented, applying 20 years of experience in listening to requirements, analyzing possible solutions, and making recommendations.

This got us talking...

In my opinion, web analytics is being somehow "hijacked" by marketing.

Read on...

I don't think it's a good idea to imply "web analytics" is “marketing optimization” (as in the eMetrics conference title); I think we should not talk about web analytics, we should talk about “business analytics”. Just like the web itself, web analytics grew from IT roots simply because it was "too technical" (1994-97), then marketing got hold of the web as a marketing channel (1996-2002), but sooner than later corporations realized marketing was "one" function of the business, so they created ebusiness strategies encompassing several business functions , including sales, customer support, creating extranets and intranets and so on (2002-). Soon we won’t even talk about ebusiness, because in the end the “web” will be blended in all aspects of the corporate functions and culture.

Then, this morning I read the excellent post from Paul Legutko, at Semphonic, "The Future of Web Analytics Consulting" and a few minutes ago, the follow up from Marshall Sponder. What a coincidence!

I think the same type of transition from IT to Marketing to Business-wide will happen, probably sooner than we think. What we call “web analytics” today, which has somehow become the stronghold of marketing, will continue to evolve. In reality, what we want to do is “analytics” using all scientifically valid methods and tools to optimize the business, and that includes not only web analytics for marketing optimization as we know today, but make extensive use of "multiplicity" to optimize all functions of the business. It's certainly no coincidence that Thomas Davenport, a thought-leader in analytics and business strategy, will be a keynote at the San-Francisco eMetrics.

What can the web learn from videogames?

Montreal Tech Watch is one of my favorite blogs (and I have 154 subscriptions in my Google Reader!), and its author, Heri, does really great posts, such as this one. I first met him at a Web Analytics Wednesday last year, he was just arriving in Montreal and came to me to inquire about startups and the technological market in Montreal. A year later, his blog covers technology, innovation and startups in Montreal and has become a must read!

Tonight, I read his coverage of D.I.C.E. 2008 where Ubisoft Montreal CEO Yannis Mallat presentation challenged the concept of "best, fastest, best-looking engine and technology in favor of innovation and emotion."

Technology’ main role is to serve creative talent. Quite frankly, code does not translate into emotion.

It also reminded me of my times at Softimage where its founder, Daniel Langlois, had to build the animation software to achieve his dream of creating better tools for artists.

Despite my roots in IT, I can relate to his call. Web sites are (still too) often the results of technological bells and whistles put together at the cost of finding innovative ways to engage, persuade and convert.

Web analytics is not hard, it's exciting!

The Kaushik vs Peterson, hard vs easy saga continues...

Following my post about Firing pixels: web analytics is hard or easy? I exchanged a couple of emails with Eric. The latest I got was

"I’m adding you to my “web analytics is easy” list … which is kind of sad. Next big audience you’re in front of ask them whether WA is easy or hard. Then ask them why they find it so."

My point is this: ask anyone if their job is easy, regardless of the field. You are very likely to get a clear "no, it's hard" in return. Probably something to do with human nature!

"Hard" is not exclusive to web analytics, and I think it's not any harder than many of the jobs out there. We are in mostly new, uncharted territory, where we have to learn, experiment, make mistakes and explain again and again what is, or is not, web analytics.

I don't call that "hard", I call that "exciting"!

Firing pixels: web analytics is hard or easy?

In the old days we had an expression for emails that were very emotional, passionate, the virtual equivalent of an hostile conversation where the tone raise as each proponent get entrenched in their opinion. We called those "flame mails" or simply "flaming".

What we are witnessing between two great minds of the web analytics field, namely Avinash Kaushik and Eric Peterson, is much more subtle than flaming. It's more like "firing pixels" at each other. Always polite, always very professional, but at the same time, we can feel a growing level of sarcasm. Using the power of pixels to express their opinions...

Now what? Is web analytics hard, difficult, painful, easy, whatever?

Let me ask this: when have you met someone who said his/her job was a walk in the park, everything was under control, no sweat, watching the game, having a Bud...

Web analytics is hard/difficult/complex

When we look at the whole picture, web analytics is hard and difficult. Hey! If someone can travel the world and get acclaimed for stating such an evidence, it must be true isn't it? Building a house is also hard, difficult and complex if you don't have a blueprint, if you don't have the right set of skills, if you don't have the right material and always change your goals. If it was easy, more companies would succeed, no?

Web analytics is easy

Look at the definition of "business process" on Wikipedia. We keep earing web analytics is a process, not a tool. You will find out that a process has a couple of characteristics:

1. Definability: It must have clearly defined boundaries, input and output.
2. Order: It must consist of activities that are ordered according to their position in time and space.
3. Customer: There must be a recipient of the process' outcome, a customer.
4. Value-adding: The transformation taking place within the process must add value to the recipient, either upstream or downstream.
5. Embeddedness: A process can not exist in itself, it must be embedded in an organizational structure.
6. Cross-functionality: A process regularly can, but not necessarily must, span several functions.

Any process can become overly complex if not broken down into smaller chunks of specific and achievable tasks. This morning, at the Montreal eMetrics Breakfast I presented the WASSUP approach (more on that in an upcoming post), so obvious, so simple, so easy. Most people will say there's nothing new, and they are right! We already know the theory and the concepts.

So tonight I'm taking position: web analytics is easy, we just have a hard time putting it into action.

Hey! Thanks Joseph!

Sometimes we say "thank you" as a form of social best practice, a bit automated and cold. Sometimes we say "thank you" from our heart, a real and sincere "thank you" for making us feel the warmth of being listened to, for the pleasure of sharing and spending time that makes us better persons in our professional and personal lives.

Thank you Joseph!

Honestly, that's what I felt this week end when my friend Joseph Carrabis and his CEO wife Susan came visit us in Quebec city. How in the world can people from different countries, different background and (sorry Joseph!) different ages get along so well? I don't know, but it just happen to be. My wife is a bit shy, but at first glance, she knew Joseph and Susan would be friendly and "compatible". It's a strange feeling, why do we meet people and we instantly know "it doesn't fit", and others we know we'll have great time with? Of course we talked about web analytics and the upcoming eMetrics conference where we will be on a panel to discuss about cultural behavior, and he gave me great advices for WASP. But we also discussed hunting, religion, history, politics, career, etc.

According to Wikipedia, a handshake is "a short ritual in which two people grasp each other's right or left hands". The formality stops there. If you give the right hand and put your left hand on the arm or shoulder, it demonstrate respect & friendship. If two nearly 6' tall men hug each other and their wifes say "HOooo!"... priceless :)

Online business in Quebec: culturally and financially distinct

Despite growth in online ecommerce and retail activity, it is not clear that Quebec businesses are moving to take advantage of the trend. Quebec-based businesses risk losing their traditional customer relationships to foreign players in the online world.

With the percentage of Quebecers' online increasing (71.5 % in November 2006 and 72.3% in June 2007 CEFRIO) ecommerce activity is on the rise as well. In November, 16 % of adult Quebecers spent 401 millions on products and services bought on the Internet. And we know Canadians buying online increased 34 % to 45 % between 2004-06. However, since the CEFRIO "Indice du Commerce Electronique" doesn't state which percentage of this spending is done in Quebec vs the rest of Canada or abroad, it is not clear that this growth is translating into increased revenue for Quebec-based retailers.

The past year have highlighted the efforts of US Giants such as eBay and Amazon in the French language capabilities and optimization of their websites targeting the Quebec market. It is expected that the increased Quebec market traction resulting from these efforts will continue to grow in 2008.

The truth is that Quebec retailing has traditionally been able to rely on our unique culture and language as a barrier against foreign competitors who would have tried to enter the Quebec market. That advantage is not as important online and Quebec retailers need to start acting now to protect their status of preference among Quebecers or risk losing it to competitors from not only out of province, but out of country.

The web presents a double edged sword to retailers in any market as it both increases the potential business opportunity as well as the scope of competitors that business is likely to face. The need to strategically address a retail web presence with clear cut commitment to web analytics and the use of that data to adapt the online offering is a key principle for success online.

"There are proven methodologies and simple and straightforward steps that retailers can take to protect and grow their market share in both online and offline transactions," says Jim Sterne, founder of the Web Analytics Association and Chairman of the eMetrics Marketing Optimization Summit (coming up in Toronto, March 31st-April 2nd). "The growth of web commerce is clearly both a threat and an opportunity to Quebec retailers. Active use of strategic web analytics tools can help Quebec retailers to level the playing field and help them successfully navigate the changes that will be thrust upon them today and in the coming months."

To address the threats and opportunities facing Quebec Retailers, the Web Analytics Association will be holding a one day breakfast seminar at the Delta Montreal, on Wednesday, February 6, 2008, 7:30am - 10am. The forum will allow attendees to share and discuss the challenges at hand, and what steps can be taken to improve the state of their online presence.

(Note: content of this post re-edited from "Language and culture may not be enough to protect Quebec retails in the online world")

Guy Kawasaki's web analytics prediction for 2008

First, I want to say I admire what Jeremiah Owyang is doing, great interviews, great insight. His latest piece is right from an ice ring, where he goes into a very open discussion with Guy Kawasaki. Jeremiah starts by asking "how is it going to be for marketers in 2008?". Kawasaki's answer is straight to the point:

"I think it's gon'a just be more and more pure stats and it's gon'a be like... really quantitative... people will really want to know. Especially with things going into a recession..."

Listen at least to the first minute or so of the interview. If Guy says that, we can be sure there's a huge crowd of marketers who will be looking at their stats much more seriously than before.

Web Analytics training: mix concepts and hands on

This morning, while taking my first coffee and making my daily round of blogs and emails, I noticed the Press Release from Omniture "More Than 5,000 Trained Through Omniture University As Demand for Online Marketing Skills Increases". There's this quote about me in it:

“Omniture University training goes way beyond Web Analytics 101,” said Stephane Hamel, a Canada-based Web analytics consultant and thought leader that recently attended Omniture University training in Montreal. “People who attended left the training armed with specific skills they could implement right away—from quick wins to longer-term, strategic areas that will lead to new revenue opportunities for their company.”

As a local web analytics enthusiast and events organizer, I helped Omniture set up this course in Montreal. We managed to get a full room of local Omniture clients and it really fostered communication and networking among participants. Feedback was absolutely great and people asked for more!

At the same time, I'm also tutoring the UBC Award of Achievement in Web Analytics. This 4 course curriculum is just amazing for anyone who wants to get broader knowledge about the concepts and expertise regardless of a specific product. In my opinion, what might be a perfect path to web analytics is to take the UBC courses and pursue and mix it with training specific to the tool you use. Attending events such as local web analytics get together or the upcoming breakfast and eMetrics is the cherry on top of the Sunday.

For 2008 I'm working on other types of local events that will address specific needs expressed by people who attended the "[WAM] Web Analytics in Montreal" and "[WAQ] Web Analytics in Quebec" events. I'll keep you posted!

P.S. If you would like to sponsor one of the future [WAM] or [WAQ], or are willing to present a business case, please contact me.

Online identity, reputation and privacy

Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace, GMail, Hotmail, Yahoo!, YouTube, Amazon, eBay, FeedBurner, del.icio.us, Flickr, Friendster, corporate identities... and a bunch of others. Thank God I have resisted the temptation of using Second Life and Twitter! And a newcomer, I'm giving a try at Naymz:

It's like managing our flesh and blood life wasn't already hard enough, now we have to manage our identity in the ether.

While we hear more and more about so called "social network" horror stories or email bankruptcy, a "Giaant", I mean Google, is sticking to its corporate mission to "organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful". This week we witnessed the birth of the gPC, a simple and cheap solution that totally avoid Microsoft while being enough for most casual home users. This PC is not "built by" Google itself but obviously heavily backed up. And that's not the only battle front for the business "Goood" of the 21st century: gPhone, backing mySQL, OpenSocial (and a first security breach in 45 minutes!), Google enterprise plans and probably other stuff we don't suspect today.

At the same time, while Facebook was an unsuspected player just a few months ago, it is raising to become a data-pit of private information grown to unprecedented scales. It seems that Project Beacon will raise segmentation and one-to-one marketing capabilities to a new level... this will be done within a closed, badly developed, unusable interface... with the consent of its users. My personal experience of Facebook isn't very positive. So far, the 57 "friends" I have in Facebook and the Web Analytics Quebec group that gathered 41 fans in a week haven't proven to be very effective to ease constructive communication (other than the zombies and a bunch of other useless gadgets).

All of those have one thing in common: information concentration in the hands of a few. And these days, information is power. Sadly, history has proven that too much power in one's hand, even with the pure and honest intention of "doing no evil", inevitably ends up in chaos.

A view of the web analytics market

Is it the end of recreation for competition and innovation?

This week buzz was all about Omniture acquisition of Visual Sciences. This gives us a pretty good indication of where the market is heading: consolidation, less competition at the high-end level, but also a potential for more maturity. At the same time, Google Analytics is pushing from the base and adding new features that will make entry-level competition slowly disappear. Is it the end of competition and innovation? I don't think so. Innovations still abound and there are plenty of space for new ideas: think about TapeFailure, RobotReplay, ClickTale, CrazyEgg and others that are interesting innovations in search of a bigger role (yes, maybe eventually absorbed by the bigger players). Coremetrics, WebTrends and ClickTracks and others remain very good solutions for some companies.

End-to-end view

My take is also that monitoring will eventually be much closer to web analytics (the Keynote, AlertSite and Gomez of this world) and end-to-end monitoring of the user experience will play a bigger role. It's obvious that a degraded web performance or poorly performing enterprise systems have a direct impact on conversion and outcomes on the frontline. Unless I'm mistaken, this is not measured by any of the ASP-based solutions.

Qualitative data

From another angle, qualitative data such as surveys, polls, content ratings will also naturally merge with web analytics platforms. We already see it with OpinionLab being integrated to SiteCatalyst through the Omniture Genesis integration platform.

Commodization of the core tools

Wikipedia says of the word "commodization" it "is a process that transforms the market for a unique, branded product into a market based on undifferentiated price competition" and continue saying "a performance oversupply- which means that the market is performance saturated and any differentiation, even when being offered, is more than what the market demands". Considering most companies are barely using the core web analytics component of their solution, let alone more advanced features, it is very difficult to pick a vendor solely based on their core web analytics capabilities (data collection, reporting, ease of analysis, segmentation). The "web analytics 1.0" aspect is being commoditized.

While the tools appear to become a commodity, the job isn't any easier. Analysts skills are scarce, implementations are often botched, and actionable insights end up competing with other business priorities. Knowing something should be improved is one thing, having the resources (budget, people, time) to do something about it is a different story.

Actors of business optimization

We're not only witnessing the evolution of the web analytics industry. Through online process analysis and optimization, we are actors of the transformations that are changing the way business is being conducted online, and off line.

Life, death, childhood dreams and living with integrity

A colleague told me about Randy Pausch "last lecture", a tradition from Carnegie Mellon whereas one give a lecture like he would be dying soon. Except this time, it's true for Dr.Pausch. He is suffering from pancreatic cancer, a father of three and computer science professor who did amazing things in the field of virtual reality.

I invite you to take a 10 minutes pause and listen to him celebrate the chance he had been given to live the life he always had dreamed of. He was inspirational to me, I hope he is for you to.

There's a 1 hour version of Dr.Paush last lecture, and a condensed (10 minutes) from his appearance at Oprah.



Some quotes from Dr.Randy Paush

"Experience is what you get when you don't get what you want"
"If you are doing a bad job and nobody points it out to you, that's when they have given up on you"
"The brick walls are there for a reason: they let us prove how badly we want things"