According to Isaac Newton’s Naturalis Prinicipia Mathematica, there are three laws which define motion, momentum, velocity, and force (at least with respect to the known gravity of earth). These are the simple principles which often comprise the first 10 minutes of any self-respecting introduction to physics. Many people recite them though they rarely think of the source, much less the value of their broad application. 

Briefly stated, the three laws are:

1. An object in motion will remain in motion unless acted upon by a net force, and an object at rest will remain at rest unless acted upon by a net force; this is also known as inertia.
2. Force equals mass multiplied by acceleration.
3. For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. ¹

Recently, I read about a merger between two web analytics commercial reporting and services providers. Newton and his principles came to mind. I read on.

Omniture is a behemoth. It boasts 2,200 clients based on a recent write up in Forbes.² This was mentioned along side major players like AOL/TW, Wal-Mart and General Motors and about 3 inches beneath a table which stated their market capital currently exceeds $2 billion. Oh, did I mention that they also serve up analytics reports for the single most used online shopping system in the world – eBay. This, in sooth, was actually where I first became aware of them. When I got to CableOrganizer, I was reintroduced to their more complete SiteCatalyst tool as well as the other platforms. So, yeah, Omniture was big before they started gobbling up service and solution providers around the planet.

On a personal note with respect to the company and its co-founders: I actually sat and talked with John Pestana at the Summit in Salt Lake City this spring, while en route to a stand-up performance by Frank Caliendo. It was surprising how accessible and personable a man he was. That was before Discover 2.0, the TouchClarity and Offermatica acquisitions, and certainly long before Visual Sciences was a dancing partner. That was also just prior to Mr. Pestana’s announcement of his resigning his post, but remaining on the board.³ Congratulations to John and Mr. James on gracefully handling some big moves. May the force be with them….alright…back to work.

Considering all that has been kicked around in that arena, its interesting to see how Omniture is building its machine. In previous acquisitions and deals, there was a clear purpose. Offermatica brought an important piece of the testing puzzle into the statistical mix. TouchClarity produced a bridge to an entity structured on behavioral targeting. That particular area I find fascinating in scope, application, and potential. The Instadia deal was clearly a stake in foreign markets. So, what is the real deal with Visual Sciences.

As I see it, this acquisition, should it be approved by the FTA and SEC, is the web analytics industry equivalent of an object in motion. The snowball started rolling and its just picking up everything that is in its path. There does not appear to be a ‘net force’ out there which exists to impede its momentum except for possibility of the alphabet agencies raining on their parade, or the apocalypse.

In this instance, Omniture doubled its customer base and sliced its viable competitors in half. Earlier this year, Visual Sciences was acquired by Web Side Story (WSSI). In a few months, the Web Side nameplate was traded in for the Visual Sciences (changing their stock symbol to VCSN) moniker.⁴ I thought that was a good move considering the ‘Broadway Drama’ allusion to a Leonard Bernstein musical didn’t really illicit the image of a sophisticated, analytical software provider. Now, of those three companies eager to set the pace for the next stage of analytics practice, only Omniture exists.

Once the ball rolls through Visual Sciences it remains to be seen what is on the horizon for analytics practitioners. Omniture, of course, having brought all these major aspects of interest to an analyst into a single venue, has the greatest potential to become a company efficiently empowering the “numbers-geeks” (like me) out there, or to ultimately become the next black shroud in the evil empire of IT conglomerates. The snowball continues gains mass, and acceleration.

With the complete web analytics package, you have to wonder what other worlds there are out there to conquer. Should MicroStrategy, Business Objects, and Cognos be keeping a close eye yet? I think so. I think integration is the next great frontier before this thing gets way out of control. Depending on your revenue model, you either view web analytics as a single science practiced independently of BI, or, you view web analytics as a proportion of a comprehensive business intelligent suite. If I had to hedge a bet on the next big move, I would look to see one of the companies above start to ready resources to counter and contain Omniture or to befriend them in hopes of meeting the recipe for their best-of-breed acquisition model.

Equal and Opposite Reaction

The reaction to Omniture is ultimately in the hands of the people out in Orem handling the business and the services associated with their product. Currently they list under 500 employees on Wikipedia ⁵, 531 on Yahoo!’s finance profile⁶. That’s 1 employee per 8 clients by my count. This poses a difficult customer service logistics problem.

As it stands right now, Omniture has had trouble meeting all the demands we (myself, Paul, and others at CableOrganizer.com) have put on them. Granted we’re an impetuous group absolutely obsessed with knowing and growing. But if they can’t roll with us now, how are they going to service their contracts when they absorb only a portion of what Visual Sciences can bring in with respect to live help. Even if they counted every employee from VSCN⁷, as well as existing employees, it only adds up to just over 800 employees. This moves the ratio back to 1:5. Still, this is difficult to manage while accounts continue and the level of practice sophistication is elevated.

When the approval is through, the snowball will have reached critical mass. Josh James, co-founder of Omniture with Pestana, mentioned in the press release that a main goal of this purchase (merger/acquisition/whathaveyou) was to help “accelerate…investments in advanced solutions that drive customer success as well as create further opportunities to cross-sell (their) growing portfolio of products.⁸ That is going to take a huge effort to back up as well as maintain. My hope is, IF it clears approval, they’re up to the task and can find the right amalgam of services to blend and offer to those of us on either side of this deal. Further, I hope whatever the name of this monster, it stays friendly and helpful.

Sources:

1. Newton, Isaac, Naturalis Principia Mathematica, Laws of Motion,

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newton%27s_laws_of_motion) (30 October 2007)

2. Associated Press: Forbes.com, Visual Sciences, Omniture Surge on Deal, published 26 October 2007, available: 30 October 2007. http://www.forbes.com/feeds/ap/2007/10/26/ap4269064.html

3. Omniture Press, Omniture Press Detail: Omniture Co-Founder John Pestana to Resign Position ,omniture.com, Posted: Orem, UT 28 March 2007

Available 30 October 2007, http://www.omniture.com/press/333

4. Watson, Frank ; Omniture Buying Visual Sciences, SearchEngineWatch.com

Available 30 October 2007, http://blog.searchenginewatch.com/blog/071025-172520

5. Wikipedia: Omniture, Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia.

Available: 30 October 2007, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omniture

6. Yahoo! Finance, OMTR: Profile for OMNITURE, Inc. , Finance.Yahoo.com

Available: 30 October 2007, http://finance.yahoo.com/q/pr?s=OMTR

7. Yahoo! Finance, VCSN: Profile for VISUAL SCIENCES INC, finance.yahoo.com

Available: 30 October 2007, http://finance.yahoo.com/q/pr?s=VSCN

8. Omniture Press, Omniture Press Detail: Omniture to Acquire Visual Sciences, omniture.comPosted: Orem, UT and San Diego, CA 25 October 2007

Available 30 October 2007, http://www.omniture.com/press/417

In the fair cities of New York, Boston, Seattle, Chicago, San Francisco…even Charlottesville, its easy to have an elevated, challenging conversation about Web Analytics. These cities have a significant common factor which helps promote this ideal: Each has a significant level of business innovation driven by academia. In the southeast, at least in Florida, there appears to be an apparent void of buy-in, advanced practice adoption, and process integration for web analytics decision. The purpose of this post is to begin explore the possibility of a deficiency, cite reasons one might exist, and to get the attention of practitioners in the area to begin having discussions on what we know.

If you are a practicing web analyst, business intelligence analyst, or quantitative strategist in Florida (South Florida would be great) please leave me a comment or a note to tell me who you are, where you are, and when we can talk.   I’d be interested in getting something going for a Web Analytics Wednesday.  Further, I’d be really interested in comparing notes and seeing what we can learn from each other.

For those of you not in Florida, I’m interested to see where you hang your shingle too. Please feel free to contact me with any info or any subjects you’d like to discuss.

Many sites are built around templates or around a system of reproducing common elements throughout the established navigation theme. The components of these site-wide elements are often very important elements contributing to conversion but easy to ignore from a multivariate testing perspective. The purpose of this post is to explain an apparent problem in test development which, when countered with an offered method, may help produce great gains. This methodology was developed for a site in a retail setting and can be reproduced effectively, with sufficient traffic, in a relatively short time.

Google Website Optimizer is my free multivariate tool of choice. Personally, it has not let me down. There are times when it takes some creative leaps to uncover the appropriate methodology, but I have yet to run into a situation where I cannot produce the test I need by the means provided. The testing described here is what I would consider VERY ADVANCED. I say this because it requires a high level of tool familiarity, a solid understanding of the available approaches, site operations/mid-level developer programming skills, and significant pre-test documentation and elements preparation.

Step 1. Choose your elements and variations wisely.
There are lists of items which exist for the purpose of placing relative emphasis on certain global elements of a page which users value and which contribute, in part, to the conversion goal of a site. These usually include graphic and text link calls-to-action, application cues, logos, headlines and taglines, trust elements, brand affiliations, unique selling propositions, and rotational zones. Attach some custom tracking to each of these to quickly uncover the relative value of each of these as they perform in the context of each presentation within the path. Uncover those most highly related to your conversion goal across a variety of paths and plan your test around these.

Step 2: Consult Best Practices
Do the research to find out what are common and best practices for each of the elements which have been designated as having a positive correlation to the conversion metric. Apply several variations of top practices to each of the elements. Isolate them, prepare the variations, install them where they need to be and test them prior to incorporating them into the set up of the test. Ensure that each fits the space exactly as it should be described in code. Copy and paste all the backside code into very comprehensive tables for the purpose of saving time on re-setup as well as helping for organizational and statistical modeling purposes.

Step 3. Set Up Google Optimizer Framework
If you’ve used Google Website Optimizer, you’re probably aware of how the tagging works. For global elements, those which occur on every page throughout the site, you will want to ensure that the script snippets are placed as close to the top and bottom of the OUTPUT HTML as possible. This means they may have to go into your template, or your dynamic page framework as necessary. This may include placing them inside of a PHP file or some other server side application execution file. As long as they appear correctly in the output, this won’t create a problem.

Step 4. Set Conversion Goal
You probably already have a page which you consider your ultimate indicator of final conversion. For a retailer this is usually the thank you page. There you will install your conversion goals tag. In some cases, where traffic might seem deficient or other obstacles exist, it might be advisable to come up with a conversion proxy. Sometimes this discussion sets off purists who feel correlation success is not enough to provide clear relevance to testing outcomes. For our purposes, so long as traffic in UNIQUE VISITORS is high enough to produce statistical validity over 4-5 weeks, the closer to actual conversion the better (try cart additions, or shipping page if not).

Step 5. Install Variation Splices and Build Element-Variable Catalog
Take the time to carefully match up these really sensitive areas in your site code to the variations which you intend to affect. Insert the code for the testing scripts where they need to be. (Remember, they need to be ordered and set correctly based on the OUTPUT of server executed code). Once these splices are in place, Google will present the interface to begin creating variations and give you the opportunity to load in the codes from your table. Name these variations based on some system of organization which will promote quick and simple identification. Test them over and over again to ensure that you’ve not negatively impacted any major feature on your site. (I can speak from experience that these codes can play hell on site-search features when they’re hosted away from your normal code. Ensure that you either can include or exclude this page from your testing for certain. Having to reset is very frustrating).

Step 6. Do a Full Final Review of Every Variation
Look for things like variation duplication, missing or misspelled image location URLs, text variation miscues, color issues, anything that doesn’t look right. Close out each one on your spreadsheet or checklist. Make sure that you have every possibility looked into and have another person come in and look at each. Extra eyes help at every step.

Step 7. Cross Your Fingers and Execute
Once you’ve gone down the list at least a half-dozen times, hit the button and let it live.

Step 8. Restart the test with a copy after making the changes to the items which you overlooked.
Every test which I have set up so far with a medium/high degree of difficulty has required that I immediately stop the test after a rep or associate finds something wrong with a variation. I’ve come to love this process and the Touch of Grey it creates. Set it up again, relaunch and prepare to repeat steps 6-8 until you start getting clean tests with good data.

Within a couple days, you can get the first series of relevance ratings. In a few more, you should start to see divergence. By a couple weeks, a clear winner will get way out ahead. Just sit back and let the data do the work for you. By 40 days or so, depending on the number of combinations and the traffic, you should have a very complete package and incredible insight as to what YOUR customers are doing and relating to as valuable on your site. This should give rise to several other analysis scenarios and Voila. Multivariate testing success.

Hope this is helpful. I know its kind of complicated. Feel free to send in comments or questions. More to follow.

Daniel W. Shields

And…you may find yourself surrounded by LCD screens loaded up with graphs, charts, and tables. From time to time, your boss or another person in the office might ask you for a snapshot of a page, or maybe wants to know the list of most popular products which should be considered for the top real-estate on your Home Page. Could be that this is all they need. Chances are, if this is your day, and according to some reports this is as high as 65% of our active practitioners, you may not yet know the power in process adoption.

If you work in any one of thousands of small businesses in the world making an investment in web analytics you may be the only means to make that investment work. Let’s face it, many times, companies adopt technology or methods for poor reasons. I’ve actually been in board rooms and city manager’s offices where questions of accountability were raised and highly educated, seemingly independent thinkers explained their decisions by how another agency had engaged in similar activity. Worse still, is the fact that when pressed further, it was also offered that they had not been given any data to support. In FEMA post-disaster remediation efforts, decisions like these previously cost cities in South Florida millions. For a small business, each decision could mean the difference between stretching to meet payroll or blasting out walls for expansion. Here I am giving some really simply defined means to taking process analytics into your own hands.

Warning: What I am about to discuss may increase your personal business contribution value and present you with opportunity. Be prepared…

• Success as a web analyst is inevitably tied to the ability to produce analysis which yields insight to drive business decisions as they relate to site/business performance metrics. Each metric needs to be tied to a goal. There is no room for arbitrary measurement. Boil all the numbers out of a particular function of your website. Know who your visitors are, where they come from, why they visit, and what makes them act. Place this in the context of each of the purposes for your sites existence and get an idea of your relative success.
• Reports should describe, both visually and through written content, exactly how each measurement is impacted by forces. Each major facet of the business should have a sub-report. Each sub-report should have a graphic; at the very least a table. These should put the measurement into context. The written analysis for each section should have a few key observations and qualifying statements. Each paragraph thesis should be followed by support and suggested actions. When possible, isolate the potential value of each change.
• Disseminate reports to each major party with an interest in the metrics described. At first outing, give everyone with a stake in the metrics an opportunity at having your information and analysis at hand when calling the shots. It helps identify key people geared toward helping you achieve wide adoption. Then, start putting the reports in the hands of the people whom you KNOW need your data.
• Take ownership of the numbers, delegate co-ownership to key parties. Don’t wait until your third consecutive report on marketing efforts failing to start to shake up that department with a little rhetoric. Its business, and the livelihood of dozens, maybe hundreds of people. Mention, specifically if necessary, that certain actions are costing a great deal with no return, or that the conversion value of an adopted practice is not worth continuing.

• Theorize, support, examine, & experiment. A big part, I understate…an ENORMOUS part of being able to effect change is to get a sense of how the business machine is affected by actions. Start pairing actions with numbers. Start mapping statements like: ‘When x is y, z occurs n%’. Get an idea of how to impact x and y to ultimately increase the percentage of z. Build a solid understanding of the dynamics of the relationships between the numbers. What can you do to influence visitor behaviors to improve value? Tests can help to expose these behaviors as:
  • Existing - Is this something isolated? Is it phenomena? Is it human?
  • Relevant - Does this matter? Why? Where else is it? What does it tell us?
  • Conditional - Can it be influenced? Can I build a lever for this?
  • Valuable - Will endorsing this return value which will justify resource costs?

• Collect Feedback on the Process, Follow-Up, Apply Method to Resource Allocation. A process is only as good as the communication between its components. Its AS important to collecting data and creating experiments to continuously purge a chain of command of any noise. Things will happen. Internal politics, office anxiety, creative differences exist in every workplace. Every task passed down from the report is going to eventually be met with a person with a history and an opinion. The power and grace of an analyst is their adherence to data and the ability to present this in such a way as to connote a form of passive leadership. So long as measurement was conducted responsibly and the logical connections are in place, there should be few chances to become personally involved. This won’t stop people from trying. Send the data out, check up on the issue. Then, when things get gnarly, invite a ‘mediator’ to participate in a session to gather perspective and translate semantic differences.

If you follow these means, your process will have moved from ad hoc reporting and paper-wasting to becoming a valuable cog in the business decision-model. These might be sort of incomplete, but I think they outline some pretty important universal components of a solid ‘implement it today’ type of process. Used wisely, these should help immediately infuse the thought-path necessary to arrive at a more agency-specific process. For the most part, I would say these are loosely related to some of the major components which were described by Eric. I’ve used a little license as they’ve applied to my experiences.

The bottom line, is, that it doesn’t take a Fortune 500 budget to achieve this. In fact, it can be applicable to businesses as small as 4 or 5 people. Its a system. Its scalable, dynamic, and self-nourishing. It requires a human for interpretation. Resign yourself to this mantra:  Be the process, Be the process, be the process…..

I paraphrase words of one of my favorite songs (Talking Heads, ‘Once in a Lifetime’) to introduce an explanation of the forces and events which led me to write a blog at WebAnalyticsDemystified.com. As a reader, or analytics practitioner, you may have questions about: who I am, what I do, why should you trust my information, when I’m available, or where I work. The purpose of this submission is to help shed light on many of the main points behind each of these very valid facets of my existence. As a writer and web analytics practitioner, I feel its only fair to give a certain level of disclosure to present context for my content.

Brief Personal Bio:

• Hometown: Scranton, Pennsylvania - That’s right, the Electric City. I grew up in Scranton, the 7th of 8 children. None of us ever worked at Dunder-Mifflin.
• Education: Attended college for Psychology/Art/Communication Sciences at University of Scranton. Moved on to Florida Atlantic University where I continued and completed studies in Communications/History as of 2002.
• Experience: Worked in quantitative collection and analysis for a legal service provider to the State of Florida Department of Revenue. From 2003-2006: Spent 3 years building business, contacts and municipal policy for a FEMA/US Army Corp contractor. Saw my share of hurricane disaster efforts. Then, at New Year 2007, I was hired as a web analyst for the business research & development facet of CableOrganizer.com, Inc..
• Interests: In my current capacity, I find most of my time dedicated to development and implementation of highly advanced testing methods. I’ve now run about 8 or 9 unique multivariate tests using Google Website Optimizer and replicated these methods for refinement. Additionally, our team is very focused on on and off-site behavioral targeting, usability, and proprietary process development for business methods. (I can’t even wait to announce the patent work I’ve participated in)
• Personal: I’m thirty next month. I have a wonderful wife, Jenine, who is very patient with the level of attention she is denied by my analytics practice devotion, and a little boy named Logan (not after the airport, but after the Wolverine). We’re also expecting baby number 2 next April.

It was not a long shot that I tripped into computers, the internet, or web analytics for that matter. As a kid, I was a younger brother to at least 3 older siblings involved in formal computer education. I learned basic when I was 5; installed systems in my grade school, built a TriBBS bulletin board file sharing system at 13; hammered-out Lotus spreadsheets for Apple Bank in NYC on vacation when I was 15, built websites with Composer by 17. Data and measurement seemed a logical part of my life. This is what I do.

So, why should you trust me or my research? You shouldn’t…Wait. Let me clarify. Web Analytics is a funny thing. From site to site, or even from section to section on a single site, you have different goals, markets, people, and even micro-economies. As much as I, or Judah, or Eric, or any other advanced practitioner could tell you where to take your process, it is the context which is ultimately the determinant. So, my point really is that I can produce papers and research on practices until I’m blue in the face, and I do and will, but if you aren’t testing it or juxtaposing my findings versus some other viable strategy…we’re talking about religion, not science. I will always back up my assertions with numbers which I work hard to produce and protect from bad data. That does not mean they are infallible. Check’em out, work’em over, and let me know what you find.

Availability? - I have a full time job. I’m an analyst, full time. Responsibilities associated with this are pretty consuming. However, I’m always up for good conversation on practices and emerging methods. I can always be reached by email and I will almost always respond.

As a motion of gratitude for being given the opportunity to participate here at WebAnalyticsDemystified.com, I’ll refrain from any laudatory posting or linking in these installments. I plan on bringing dozens of useful posts based on sound findings. Please do not hold back on any comments or perspectives. Its my position that these are opportunities to grow the practice.

Thanks for reading.

Daniel W. Shields

What a long time its been since, as a child, I watched in awe when thrusters blaring, smoke and radiant heat distorted the image of a marvelous beast of human engineering heave itself into the early morning Florida sky. It was such a thrill. It was science and art, and human achievement, triumphing over limitations placed on us by people who used words like: “never”, “can’t”, and “impossible”. I knew it connected, somewhere. It resonated with that pugnacious piece of my soul that instinctively pushes-back and finds a way.

It wasn’t until I was much older when I realized; and based on my own curiosity, that the first successful launch of a satellite, named Sputnik, was sent into the vast ether by the former Soviet Union. The implications of that event were probably never properly calculated by the men and women who participated hurling this stone into the stagnant waters of progress. It was the type of thing that inspired the impetus of engineers at MIT to build a means to communicate at the speed of light. So, at 50 years, we celebrate the launch of a space race, and the casting-call for the age of information. These are big things to be discussing when a person lights his first candle in the Web Analytics Demystified blogosphere.

This being a blog about the practice and process of web analytics, it might hardly seem relevant to talk about the Cold War, ‘The Right Stuff’, or ARPA. The bottom line is that each of these items are linked, fundamentally, to the essential principles which will drive development, elevate our practice, and communicate results of our findings to the world of analysts seeking to improve user-experience across the board. The purpose of this writing is to illustrate this, as well as to lay a foundation for my perspective on analytics as it applies to this forum.

Unlike a large portion of the balance of international warfare, the Cold War was fought as an elaborate chess match in libraries, voiced by politicians to twist the grinder for the monkey of propaganda, but positioned and countered by science and math; protected by intelligence or espionage. This is business. Cold, warlike, mechanical and calculated; success is defined by numbers. We THRIVE or STRUGGLE by the numbers. It becomes the job of the web analyst to juggle the numbers and delegate ownership of those tallies, sums, and products to resources to press them for improvement.

Analysts then, have a parallel functionality to policy advisers in that context. We are neatly packaged, solitary think tanks meant to uncover the proverbial gaps in the armor of the primary targets. At times these metrics will include competitive analysis. Our information will help align our goals in an attempt to maintain solidarity in our race to achieve tactical superiority to the competitor. Other times, we will empower our marketing and design efforts with visionary data, like an Oracle, to foresee how tweaks to colors and choice of venues can win the hearts and minds of our daily unique visitors.

It would be a truly superbly event, and create chatter and upheaval, if a web analyst were to allude to a state of being tapped by a deity as the source for their insights. Remember, we’re about math and science, and divinity has no place. But is there room for the discussion about the ‘Right Stuff’? After all, the Kremlin flexed the muscle of science by catapulting a two foot awkward silver ball into orbit, but it was Chuck Yeager and the “Mercury Seven” who took the physics, applied science, experimentation and that intangible off the earth for a view from the moon. Sputnik made Mercury, then Gemini, and Apollo. This is practice elevation. This is the result of contributive participation. This is process.

Best practices are the shoulders of giants. They are not the progress, but the means to achieve it. It is the process that lends an analyst their unique perspective as it applies to the business model. There is an available compendium of knowledge which exists now in our broadly and undefined library, or marketplace of ideas. A common practitioner can take and apply these with success. This will rarely, if ever, endeavor to promote the idea that the value could exceed the sum of its components. In the hands of a practitioner with the skill, the will, and the guts to put their site and their ethos on the line for the glory of ‘pushing the envelope’, these best practices, adapted to process and the business model, become infused with consistently charged insights. Dream, theorize, test, fail, alter, rebuild, push, tweak, launch, improvise: all of these are the language of analysts or test pilots. Be it Mach 1, or 3% conversion, goals exist by the virtue that their being surpassed is a measure of achievement.

Meanwhile, back in the lab: flashing and beeping packets of information scurried across a wire in series of 0s and 1s. For thirty years their incubation existed and was theorized over and infrastructure blossomed. The launch of Sputnik also segued the Advanced Research Projects Agency, known as ARPA. Enter Darwin, Einstein, Hawkings, J.C.R. Licklider and Tim Berners-Lee. Primarily a tool for military, scientific and academic informational purposes, the ARPAnet was often spoken about in the context of being a worldwide informational unifier for humans. In hindsight, it was not necessarily inconceivable that the internet, as an evolutionary offspring of (D)ARPA, would become a source of livelihood for a significant portion of the world’s population, directly or indirectly.

Communication networks in hundreds of languages exist in every web analytics practitioners life. Somewhere, buried in the segments and paths of each interaction are the tags which define our collective quantitative profile. Each tangent representing some number translated to us through minutely distinctive traits and paired with anonymously analogous groups. Surveys and feedback provide a voice of users preferences. We are channeled mediators of our user’s experiences to the team of people chosen to trust our conveyance for improvement. Today, we more closely represent Marshall McLuhan’s ‘global village‘ than ever before. If there is a means to provide a more relevant identifiably improved session for our user, it exists in the sharing of our findings. Our information and perspectives may inspire the leaps necessary to expand the breadth of humanity to usurp impossibilities posed by our predecessors.

In conclusion, the purpose of this post was to achieve injecting perspective, paying homage to the events which we identify as important if not predicating our practice, and to hopefully provide an idea of how my personal contribution to this practice, and blog, is sewn into the fabric of analytics as a science which deserves research, experimentation, and process. Its my belief, or at least my hope, that Eric Peterson chose to include me with this privilege as a result of the scope which I provide. It is an honor, to be presented with an opportunity to participate in trumpeting these foundations to my colleagues. It is my goal to provide my ‘weekly unique visitorship’ with the most innovative and efficient means to elevate their use of web analytics to drive their business decisions, and to stand for an open, ethical, and researchable position of published methodical testing/results.

I sincerely thank you for taking the time to read, and welcome to my facet of Web Analytics Demystified.

My name is Daniel W. Shields. Don’t forget to comment, contact, or rate.