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...by the inmates...for the inmates...
Wednesday, August 31, 2005Well this certainly doesn't bode well for the data collectors ...
From Eric Peterson at JupiterResearch:
I would like to go on record as saying that when I first wrote and we first published our findings about cookie deletion on the Internet I didn't think that six months later I'd be seeing the kind of red state/blue state polarization on the issue that has recently appeared.
Neat use of Ajax in a web analytics application
From Eric Peterson at JupiterResearch:
I just saw WebSideStory's keyword bid management application (cleverly called WebSideStory Bid) and while I'm no authority on bid management applications I have to say it's nice to see AJAX working it's way into web analytics applications.
Tuesday, August 30, 2005Coremetrics Unveils Paid Search Tools
From Kevin Newcomb at ClickZ:
Coremetrics today followed other Web analytics providers with the launch of its paid search campaign management tool.
Learn From Your Competitors
From Jason Burby at ClickZ:
As you've evolved in your understanding of Web analytics, you should've learned to focus on metrics based on your organizational goals; discovered how to monetize the opportunities you identify; and implemented A/B or multivariate tests to make improvements.
The trick now is to determine what you should test and how to formulate the best test. There have been many articles outlining the ways to create effective tests, but this is a high-level view of the approach we take with our clients...
More Than a Quarter of Web Marketers 'Flying Blind'
From Sean Michael Kerner at ClickZ:
Web marketers lack both the confidence and analytics to properly assess results, according to a study from WebTrends.
Confidence in marketing efforts varied among those surveyed. Only five percent of marketers were very confident in the measurement of their current online marketing efforts. Just over a quarter (26 percent) admitted they were flying blind, while the same percentage (26 percent) was moderately confident. Forty-three percent indicated they were fairly confident with their efforts.
Monday, August 29, 2005Amy Gahran's Got Guts
I'm catching up on old podcasts during the long Silicon Valley commute. While listening to Ponzi's coverage of BlogHer, I remembered I hadn't posted anything about Amy Gahran's BlogHer revelation. There's no doubt that Amy's got guts. Polyamory isn't a topic you run across every day. Announcing that you plan to mention this on your business blog is even less common. However, I applaud both her original announcement, and the way she handled the resulting discussion.
It isn't "backing down" but just recognizing that it is smart business to work within the comfort zone of the largest potential client audience. Those who want to learn more about Amy can follow her other blogs in accordance with their comfort level. Amy's decision to survey her reader base was also a smart decision. Reach out and connect with your readers and potential clients? Good business.
Polyamory? In database design, one-to-one, one-to-many, and many-to-many relationships are common. Why expect the human condition to be any less flexible? You would think people would understand that it certainly beats having nobody to love.
Don't get me wrong. I don't agree with everything she's written since I discovered her last year. But, as my Pappy taught me, there ain't nothin' wrong with a difference of opinion. I've linked to Amy more often than I've linked to many other folks. That's not going to change.
Amy Gahran at Contentious. There's good reason for her father to be proud.
Interesting side note: I met a young woman last year who was raised in a polyamorous family, though I didn't know it at the time.
Saturday, August 27, 2005Another Blip on the RSS Radar
A gentleman at work wants to expand our meager RSS offering. Did someone adjust the thermostat in Hell? I stopped pushing RSS at work after my worst fears were realized. When it comes to RSS, either do it in-house or don't do it at all. No, I don't link to my company because where I work is ear-elephant. I also don't link to our RSS outsourcing vendor. Although the vendor does a poor job, that is not the issue tonight.
The only thing that matters is ... someone wants to expand our RSS feed. Even more amazing, someone else said they thought RSS was a good tool to distribute information internally. Pinch me! Yes, Virginia, there *is* a Santa Claus. (And, yes, I know you should not take a bad implementation and expand it. Humor me here.)
I've been both a producer and consumer of RSS for over 3 years. You either "get it" or you don't. But, if you're going to do it, host it on your own servers or not at all.
Standard disclaimer applies: Opinions expressed are my own, not those of my company. I don't take my opinion seriously, so why should you?
P.S. - An example of the work done by our outsource RSS vendor? We send them our full press release. They put the first paragraph in the RSS feed and link to the full release on our site. The following screenshot from the bottom of a press release in our feed, as rendered by Bloglines a few minutes ago, is offered for your amusement.
That is the improved wording, after I complained about the way they phrased it in the past. Sigh ... if you want something done right, you have to do it yourself.
Spanning Partners
RSS. You either "get it" or you don't.
Spanning Partners delivers secure enterprise content via RSS for Salesforce.com customers. The wheel turns slowly, but it *is* turning. Thursday, August 25, 2005StorageTek's Loss Is Our Gain
From Ed Foster at The Gripe Line
It's not too often we get to report good news on the courtroom front, but today brings word of a remarkably sensible decision in StorageTek's case against a third-party service provider. You know, if judges continue to demonstrate this kind of logic, it's just possible that customers may retain a few basic rights in spite of the DMCA-inspired reign of terror that intellectual property rights owners have been inflicting on us all in recent years.
Put Analytics Into Action
From Shane Atchison at ClickZ:
When asked about analytics, I'm surprised to find so many people think it's a backroom concern. Does a developer working on code really need to worry about customer conversions and daily online sales numbers? Should an art director know about traffic goals and results?
In a word, yes.
Wednesday, August 24, 2005Industry Groups Mull Cookie Efforts
From Kevin Newcomb at ClickZ:
The online marketing world has been buzzing for the past six months over several published reports that users are deleting cookies in record numbers. Since then, industry groups have been studying the situation to determine the best way to approach the situation.
"The first step is to do our best to get clean data," said Greg Stuart, CEO and president of the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB). "We don't want to try to move an industry without having a clear picture of the situation."
Defining Web Analytics: Market Intelligence
From Neil Mason at ClickZ:
My previous column outlined the need for measuring and optimizing Web site performance to become a more holistic, consumer-focused discipline rather than a purely quantitative analysis of data from a Web analytics tool. An effective measurement strategy for optimizing site performance has four key components ... Today, let's look at the meaning of "market intelligence." Market intelligence provides the context for a business' performance. To ensure the marketing plan operates in the right context, you must understand how the external world behaves and develops. The kind of things you might want to know include...
Tuesday, August 16, 2005Defining Key Performance Indicators
From Jason Burby at ClickZ:
On my daily view of the Yahoo! Web Analytics Forum, managed by Eric Peterson, I ran into an interesting question. An individual wanted to know about common key performance indicators (KPIs) for a specific industry.
It got me thinking about what the right metrics are for an individual company. Some materials cross industries or may be more pertinent to specific industries. Yet I struggled to post a response to the question, even though we've done analytics for nearly a dozen companies within the industry he was asking about.
Slashdotted: The Death of Cookies
From Eric Peterson at JupiterResearch:
I'm not sure if CmdrTaco was trying to get the Slashdot crowd to admit they have a great love affair with cookies with his post titled "Death of Cookies, Spyware Greatly Exaggerated?" but the response is pretty much what I would expect ... Slashdotters, for the most part, are anti-cookie.
Monday, August 15, 2005Cookies in the New York Times
From Eric Peterson at JupiterResearch:
Today's New York Times as a well-written article about the cookie issue. Good perspective and a great quote from Lorraine Ross of USAToday at the end: "We need to have users love their cookies, for the right reasons."
Getting Internet users to love their cookies is an idea that is gaining momentum recently (Dave Morgan, CEO of Tacdoa has some interesting ideas about cookies as well.) One group I talked to was thinking about a massive, one-day campaign to evangelize the value of cookies.
Thursday, August 11, 2005Add RSS to Your Marketing Mix
From Heidi Cohen at ClickZ:
Only 5 to 10 percent of Internet users have actually tried RSS. So why is RSS getting such high visibility? One reason is early adopters are a demographically desirable, technically savvy, information-centric audience. More important, RSS allows you to promote through a consumer-initiated content feed users sign up for and, hence, actually want.
Tuesday, August 09, 2005Web Analytics Vendors Gain Access to Yahoo! APIs
From Kevin Newcomb at ClickZ:
Yahoo! Search Marketing has resolved an ongoing dispute with Web analytics vendors to access its search marketing application program interfaces (APIs).
Coremetrics, Omniture, WebTrends and WebSideStory have signed agreements which will allow the vendors to more closely integrate their analytics and bid management tools with their joint customers' Yahoo! paid search campaigns. Other Web analytics vendors may be given access to the APIs in the future.
Defining Web Analytics
From Neil Mason at ClickZ:
One thing worries me about Web analytics: the name. "Web analytics" sounds a bit scary, doesn't it? Those two words don't necessarily sit comfortably with your average marketer or business leader. When somebody asks you what you do for a living, "Web analytics" doesn't tell them much.
Friday, August 05, 2005Measuring Personas for Success
From Bryan Eisenberg at ClickZ:
Just six months ago, personas were little more than an industry buzzword. At the recent AD:TECH conference, I surveyed the room a colleague was speaking in and was pleasantly surprised to find 30 percent of the audience claimed to use personas in site design.
Now that persona use is more widespread, the questions are different. No longer do people ask if they should use personas. Instead, they ask if their personas are effective.
Thursday, August 04, 2005Factiva Jumps Into Reputation Monitoring
From Sean Michael Kerner at ClickZ:
A new online reputation analysis tool from Factiva promises to monitor brand chatter across blogs, mainstream news sources and consumer generated media.
Tuesday, August 02, 2005Don't Be Afraid to Fail
From Jason Burby at ClickZ:
Some of the best site optimization lessons come from failed tests. Don't be afraid of trying something in a test. Do be afraid if you aren't using A/B or multivariate testing to improve your site. Unless you measure, test, and tune, you have no idea if changes you make improve or harm the site.
Monday, August 01, 2005A good example of Flash pseudo-cookies in action
From Eric Peterson at JupiterResearch:
Speaking of cookies ... we discussed the use of Flash Local Shared Objects (LSO) as a proxy for cookies in our original report and revised our guidance in the "Profile of a Cookie Deleter" report to explicitly recommend that companies who use LSO don't try and hide the fact that cookies are being backed up from their visitors. A number of clients have asked me "how should we do this?" and I have found a pretty good example at Weather.com's 1-click access to weather.
More cookie coverage
From Eric Peterson at JupiterResearch:
destinationCRM and the International Herald Tribune (via a story that will appear next week in the New York Times) both have good coverage of the cookie issue this morning.
WebSideStory Adds Dashboards, Bid Management
From Kevin Newcomb at ClickZ:
WebSideStory upgraded its HBX "active marketing suite" today with the addition of a paid search keyword management product and dashboard-based forecasting to the Web analytics suite.
Web Analytics Makes Extreme Difference
From Zachary Rodgers at ClickZ:
The proprietors of Xtremez.com, an online reseller of paintball and skateboarding equipment, suspected they had a site usability problem in late 2004.
The site brought in plenty of traffic, thanks to an extensive online CPC and search optimization program. Visitors engaged the homepage and site sub-sections extensively, but only around half wound up on a product page. Conversion metrics were abysmal...