The idea of preparedness for unexpected events or peril is nothing new. The anxiety which mounts upon each published story seem to falsely disseminate that the corrections in commerce markets are a) unprecedented and b) inextricably linked to a slippery slope of economics which will plunge our company’s infrastructure and personal lifestyles into the pits of a depression.

The ‘Perfect Storm’ which COULD create widespread economic issues is not the natural and cyclical corrections taking place in the global or capital economies, but the poor approach to reacting to this new by forcing bad decisions. In order to avoid bad decisions as an ‘economy’ we, as analysts and gilded protectorate of the data, need to empower our companies with good information. We need to understand the business as well as the business we are in. Having a grasp on this will help us navigate the choppy water of volatility.

BACK TO BUSINESS WEB ANALYTICS

If there is a time to put being an evangelist aside, it is now. This is about business. Business is, essentially, a series of decisions being made by different people and teams to produce optimal return on finances invested. Continuously improving business means becoming more efficient in action and more adept at making decisions. Making better decisions means having good, current data which can be correlated to the way in which a business makes decisions. Good data comes from a diligent analyst plucking the groupings out of raw web analytics output:

• Filtering out domains, IPs, internal users, bots, script-executing robots and anything else that will give a skewed picture of who comprises your audience.
  • Both Google Analytics and Omniture SiteCatalyst (and I’m sure the same is true of Coremetrics, ClickTracks etc.) provide a means to do this. While SiteCatalyst only boxes 5 filters, you can add many more with a Vista Rule ($)
  • Jot this down as a task that requires regular management. Simply doing this once is equivalent to taking inventory once.

When an analyst goes to a meeting to provide information to the people who need it, it should be without reservation. Confidence in the data which you are presenting or using to support avenues for business should have all the questioning done in the locker room and not on the field. Paying close attention to your data and watching out for invasive issues is key to building good decisions.

• Correlating trends in the marketplace which impact your business model as they relates to your web analytics data
  • Learn about your customers, your vendors, and your financiers and see how they are impacted by market forces.
  • Get competitive intelligence on the checklist to see how the news is impacting the market and where opportunities exist. Big economic consequences tend to create consolidation at the top, and liquidation at the bottom.
  • Get to know your Geo-locations. Big cities produce a great deal of information about topics, but their volatility depends on their ‘perceived’ collective investment in the actions creating market fluctuation
    • example: Cities where housing markets are suffering might be more aware of the local impact of the lull. The result might be that individuals whom have been exposed to larger concentrations of for sale signs might not be as willing to buy the ‘handy-dandy three speed deluxe vacuum’ of the week.
  • Build presence in areas where its necessary, and expand presence in areas which have economically insulated populations. By the time the numbers stabilize, the brand identity value should be starting to trickle down.

• Draft Momentum from Strong Brand Manufacturers or Business Affiliates
  • Whenever possible, spelunk the data on the websites of companies who provide your products, inventory, services or solutions.
  • Speak to your partners and affiliates and try to gauge when big media events are coming up.
  • Cross-pollinate their PR with your own to help feed each other energy around a product or idea.
  • Trade some venues with them. Inevitably people who are landing on your site might be trying to communicate with the manufacturer in circumstances, and vice versa. In all likelihood, you should be able to give each other ideas without cannibalizing the market. If anything, you both might benefit from knowing the mindset of the user.

• Understand Web Analytics as a Function of Marketing; As a Function of Business
  • Take the time to understand how your analytics solution measures all marketing venues (referring domains, campaigns, SEM etc.) and know how the solution is attributing the success.
    • These methods might include tricky subjects like First, Recent, Linear, or Participation attributions, or, worse: acscription which essentially provides little or no scientific basis for the explained success
  • Every dollar which is spent through a marketing budget, either directly or indirectly, should have a highly scrutinized figure of return attached to it.
  • Know where your money is going and how much is coming back.
  • Help managers and executives make good decisions on where and how to spend money to:
    • Increase likelihood of success
    • Trim costs on resources
    • Quantify return on investment

• Measure and understand the “other” web and business analytics - take the time to think through ways to get more data. Sometimes you have to get creative.
  • If you plan on using print media and have not yet done so, discuss test markets with publishers. You can spend 10% of the costs of a broad publication to test reactions in small markets. This requires benchmarking areas prior to injecting media and measuring the blip and tail in that market.
  • Independently measure personalization applications. Taking the word of the provider should never be enough. The fact that you do this might even win you points with the solution vendor. Ever since we really pressed SiteBrand, they’ve been extremely active and interested in the developments which we have with CableOrganizer.
  • Get more information about your customers through what happens when they pick up the phone. Our research company has developed a way to measure phone call web metrics using something we call Session ForeSite™. We liked it so much we filed a patent application and developed a brand around it.

While the graphic at the top of this post is a joke, on some level, I’m seriously considering putting together some sort of pamphlet or compendium on this topic for upcoming events. If anyone is interested in contributing, I’d be interested in hearing and discussing some of what experienced professionals have found is working, or has worked in the past, with regard to offsetting damaged markets.

Please feel free to comment or discuss any point here and continue to check back for updates to this particular post in case revisions are made to provide more useful information. I personally view this as a ‘living post’ instead of a regular article. Also, no information will ever be provided in any work from me on how to land a plane…just so you know…;)

This post is something akin to a rant. It is about the web analytics process and the ability to make it more functionally efficient. Its something we can all relate to:

It crossed my mind recently that there is so many facets of the analytics programs at maturity that there must be some means to internally optimize the process. I’m not talking about software or the many hundreds of small start-up companies or analysts throwing their hats in the ring, or any feature which they can add to our decision machines. I’m talking about grassroots analysis to grow business success through decision empowerment and process efficiency.

Quite simply, the steps to getting a data process start with the willingness to accept certain truths about the processes:

Knowing the objective of a website, and how that goal ties into the business model is essential in understanding where to plant an water web analytics. The connection between these can be elusive. Often, this is an aspect which comes to late in implementation or is overshadowed by a perceived need to begin producing reports. Unfortunately, this is good for the ego of the champion for analytics, but a detriment to properly installing functional analysis at the core of the human resource ecosystem.

Fueling a websites design and development machine requires making powerful assertions which can win support alone, or banish dissent with pure statistical science. Coming up with ideas is easy. Coming up with great ideas can be challenging. Coming up with great ideas and getting administration, colleagues, and the nay-sayer to go along with it can be impossible. There is a reason for this. It has to do with appeals. Appeals are the way in which information is communicated to reach the part of the receivers brain which helps them build a concept for themselves and the group. Everyone has a way they WANT to hear or see your information presented and how it affects their world. In that respect, you can either be a communications genius, or, build the case for math…which appeals to everyone. (I will write an entire post on appeals and how to use them some other time. This is a fascinating area which I think has very high relevance to analytics) Math is the key to making the process sprout. It is the foundation, the proof, and the method of delivery.

If making math work for the business routine of web analytics is the goal, we should break down the subroutine. This seems to be the main point of struggle for recent practice adopters and parties interested in participating in analytics. Each component is arguably a necessary step to producing useful reports which detail insights and suggest action, based on math. Here is HOW, piece by piece, you create action from analytics.

Just looking at reports day to day, any analyst should start to recognize patterns. The human mind is amazing with regard to this. We see lines and columns with comparable trends and past performance which either fit or do not fit. Here, you begin to ask questions. Remember this part, because this is the first major function of any analytical process. You find things that intrigue you, and seek to explain them by using the data.

With continued observation and investigation, you might begin to see correlations. Some might be as simple as every weekday visits decrease consistently by 60% between 12-2pm EST. You might be in the business of selling medical supplies. Where you might already know it is a lunch related subsiding, why does this happen? Why is it that consistent? What do these people DO during that TIME which prevents them from visiting and buying between 12-2pm?

If you’ve ever worked with a pharmacist or in a doctor’s office, or a hospital, you’ve likely experienced a fairly standard phenomena of their lunch habits. For 2 hours everyday, administrative work in the medical world is reduced to a skeleton crew. This impacts the amount of work which can be done outside of necessities, which, sadly, does not include purchasing catheters or bidets from BioRelief.com. What this does, though, is provides a certain correlation for, or explanation to the dip.

High value correlations should be based on the number of times when the desired action occurs, the consistent recurrence of that action, and how many different places this same action can be observed. These collected actions are not, in themselves, the goal, but rather, checkpoints which may or may not positively indicate some motive to achieve, or explain diversion from, the goal. The correlations give us an idea of how to cater our information to and find more avenues to improving the experience for the user.

Correlations lead to understanding and understanding should lead to hypothetical assertions. The place for making bold statements is in this stage. Take the pieces of correlated information yielded from curiosities and chasing rabbits and start to use them in building profiles or saying things like, to use the example above: “Shutting down our Search Marketing campaigns between 12-2 pm daily will save a total of $95 in fruitless clicks per day, which, when calculated is an estimated $25,000 in savings per year.”

Assertions should be elaborated on; then tested for validation and range. The world of online testing does not exist to give us something to talk about. The discussion is, instead, the result of seeing value in testing. A/B testing, using a control group versus variables, can be useful in all aspects of campaign or site optimization. Multivariate testing is an extremely efficient component for providing statistical validation of elements, as well as uncovering additional unintended correlations for further discussion. (Element design, additional perspectives, and other assertions from the design and development owners should help provide resources and add value to multivariate testing). Usability testing can place a single session under such scrutiny as to not only validate an assertion, but provide an immediate solution. (and, by the way, another great way to get people involved in the process).

Test results need to be scrutinized by analysts AND potential dissenters prior to reporting. Have colleagues and co-workers pick apart the outcomes. Get more input. This has the amazing effect of not only involving common adversaries in the project, but giving them an sense of where you are coming from. It helps them understand you. In doing to, you break down uncertainty and increase communication. (also a subject which I discussed at this venue). The business will begin to build around research based decisions.

By the end of this round of web analysis, you should have answers to report to the group, participation from people whom have been involved in the process. and the data and statistics to back up your position on any arguments you encounter. This will win favor, promote action, place value or at least validity behind statements, and, hopefully, spawn more questions, deeper analysis and better understanding.

As Wikipedia defines it, Web 2.0 is…”a perceived second generation of web-based communities and hosted services — such as social-networking sites, wikis and folksonomies — which aim to facilitate collaboration and sharing between users.”

This definition has a few bugs, but the point is clear. The idea of having two-way communication, or dyadic communication, is the goal of those applications seeking the illustrious designation of 2.0, at their very minimum. Ultimately, the concept, at least in my opinion, is that the posting of information in a social context, is to share ideas and incite discussion about the topics that are discussed by a relatively informed and intelligent readership. Although, readership still implies one-way communication, doesn’t it?

Maybe a more appropriate Web 2.0 term should be ‘dyadership’ or ‘commership’ (implying commenting-readership) or some other clever bastardization of technobabble. I honestly can’t think of an appropriate massaging of ‘Dyad’. Of course, having that opens a whole new rabbit-hole for measuring and discussing how a blog measures its engagement and its apparent value to the public. Not how many people “See” or “Read” your stuff, but what percentage of those visitors volunteer perspective to grow your footprint for that specific subject on the web.

Recently, while attending a Shop.org conference event in Las Vegas, I had the opportunity to listen to a presentation given by David Weinberger, PhD (a Research Fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School). While a portion of this was dedicated to bridging the gap between his two major works: ‘”The Cluetrain Manifesto” and “Everything is Miscellaneous“; a significant idea advanced by Dr. Weinberger was the inversion of a long-established social and commercial truth that the agency which controlled data, controlled the message. This is, by many standards, no longer considered absolute, and much less manageable with respect to the internet and the infinitely exponential calculations of people x opinions x venues.

Controlling the message now has a negative reaction from the perceptive open dialog of the world. Whether your site’s purpose is informational, functional, or commercial there is a measurable population comprising a ‘well of opinion’ about your brand, your product, your message, and, sadly, your personnel. To paraphrase Carrie Fisher as ‘Princess Leia’: ‘The more you tighten your grip…the more (insert Web 2.0 term) slip through your fingers”.

As a high profile example of this behavior, I would like to point to exhibit “A”: Washington Wizard’s Gilbert Arenas making predictions on his “Blog” about scoring and upcoming games, as well as compiling a catalog of excruciatingly calculated self-laudatory injections about his skill set and value as a player. Disclaimer: I’m a huge Boston Celtics fan. I also do not personally know Mr. Arenas and limit my commentary to his publication.

If anyone has been paying attention, the NBA season tipped-off last week. With its commencement, the Boston Celtics, a team which I am a lifetime fan, amped up their crowd in a pleasing display of teamwork and success with new additions Kevin Garnett, Ray Allen, a determinant Paul Pierce, and the sharp-shooting of Rajan Rondo. Late in the third quarter of this collaborative clinic on teamwork, the rowdy and playoff-starved crowd, and the newly knighted Red Auerbach Court began rumbling and repeating the word “Gilbert”. I became curious. The commentators eventually divulged that the Gilbert to whom the crowd referred was Gil Arenas.

Mr. Arenas days prior posted on what he and others call his blog:

“So listen here. On November 2nd, we’re going to go into that building, we’re opening up Boston. Right now I’m telling the Boston fans: You guys are going to lose. It’s not going to be a victory for Boston. You might as well just cheer for me, because Boston isn’t winning in Boston for the season opener. I’m sorry.”

The outcome was a decisive Boston win: 103-83 final. A fitting start to a season which began with a gift from former Celtic Kevin McHale trading out Garnett from Minnesota. The win was apparently the only comment which held any meaning as far as Arenas, the Washington Wizards, or the NBA was concerned. No other commentary is allowed on his blog.

Sure, there are certainly reasons why this makes sense. There are too many people in Boston willing to comment on such statements before and after the game - memory consideration. The platform is hosted on NBA.com - obscenity and liability considerations. He talked trash in the town where it was invented - bandwidth considerations. But, no matter what the consideration, this ‘Blog’ is really no more than bad single-mode PR. On the other hand, what if commentary was allowed? How would that affect his play? How could he improve his image, his accuracy, and his public perception if he could be so bold as to gain insight from the feedback he received? What about Gilbert Arenas - the Open Brand….?

From an analytics and a Web 2.0 perspective, this is an example of a hit-counter. Nothing more than sophisticated than the electronic media equivalent of the tree in the woods. If a blog exists and produces information that nobody can share in and help define, it will soon be relegated to dusty shelves like the Atari and the Betamax.

Google’s wonderfully free Website Optimizer tool just got a little better. Apparently, they’ve heard enough of us complaining about the problems which existed with the cookie life. Previously this was only available on a session basis. So, no matter how long you set the cookie for, it would expire or disappear with the closure of a browser or tab. In theory, the session could last with a refresh for up to the amount of time specified in the _utimeout function of the script which was placed on the cookie.

As of 7pm, 1 November 2007, this cookie is now set for a specified life of up to 2 years across sessions. Specificity regarding the creation date of the experiment is a consideration. About that Google stated:

“Experiments created prior to October 30, 2007 won’t use these new
cookies — this will include follow-up experiments and copied
experiments created after October 30 that are based on original
experiments that were created prior to October 30. For example, if you
created an original experiment on October 10th 2007, then created a
follow-up experiment based on the original on November 10th, 2007,
that follow-up would not use 2-year cookies. “

You can check out the rest of the details if you want to by clicking into their WebEx Playback here. The original release of this information is also available through the Google Website Optimizer BETA forum.

As always, I love to talk about these types of things. If anyone has any questions or comments about how to deal with GWO, or problems with specific testing scenarios, please feel free to drop a line. Please also remember to sift through some of the testing “tagged” posts if you need any help getting some more advanced testing done. I previously posted a great deal about Taguchi Multivariate Tests, conversion proxies, and cookie manipulation on my old blog. I’ll be migrating parsed versions of these very soon.

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.

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.