Coffee, Sun & Technology

For quite some time now I’ve been using analytical tools to slice and dice user data on “small sites” (Wambo gets about 50K visits a month roughly, and I have 2 other small B2C service sites that I’m managing on the side). In doing so, I’ve realized that the kinds of metrics you look at for these sites that need to grow fast are very different from traditional analytics.

While traditional sites look at “improving” existing business processes (increasing conversion rates, enhancing the customer experience, etc etc ), startup sites are laser-focused on finding the right formula for their site or service. Startups are always building. And speed is what matters.

For us early stage sites, we look at a completely different set of numbers. And, we compare data ALL the time. Month-over-month, week-over-week, even sometimes, hour-over-hour. So I’m thinking of another kind of analytics that’d be useful for me, let’s call that growth analytics. In an ideal interface, I’d like everything presented in the context of velocity. Velocity been the uber measure, similar to a session or a page view in traditional web analytics.

I’d want to see user acquisition velocity by hour, day, week and month. I’d like to be able to compare velocities for different time ranges (this week vs last week). I want to be able to track acquisition velocity  for different segments. I want to A/B test my site and see what the impact is on the velocity metrics. And I want to project in the future what my KPIs will look like if I can sustain the current velocity levels (i.e. if I keep growing my users by 3% a week, that will get me to the 1Million user mark by ___). A new calendar type but with dates in the future too, not just in the past.

Yes, you see where I’m going now. I think what’s a little broken with the state of analytics today is the fact that we spend 90% of our time trying to answer the “what happened” question. And that’s soooo yesterday

So I guess I’m one of the lucky bloggers who got a “preview” of the big big big news from ClickTale. Looking at the email header (below) I was expecting something like a triple merger Omniture-WebTrends-Coremetrics, for $100billion dollars in cash, funded by the French government and with Carla Bruni as the CEO of the new entity.

Well, I’m sorry to disappoint. It was an email from a PhD guy name Tal who happens to be the CEO of the company. Yes, that’s right, this is where we’ve come down folks — take a feature of your product (anything will do, your new logo, a font change, or even form abandonment), put together an email to a few hundred bloggers, with the words “ALERT”,  “You can’t break the news”,  “There’s an embargo”, and patiently wait for the busy bloggers to bite without doing the research.

And it works. TechCrunch covered the story.  And I’m sure many others will too. Now ClickTale dudes: think twice before sending absurd emails like this to a crowd of people who might know what they’re talking about. Form abandonment was first released in 2003 and all respectable analytics vendors have that feature. I know nothing about your product but you don’t seem to know anything about this market.

A month doesn’t go by without a Marketing Manager, Director or even VP asking me if they should or should not use Google Analytics on their retail or content site. After the initial wave of sites which moved to Google Analytics when it was made free in 2005, there seems to be a new wave of larger sites now wondering what to do.

Whether this is part of the normal Web analytics space consolidation cycle, or simply the “question du jour” remains to be seen. But I think there is a bigger story here. The chasm is widening between eMarketers on one side, and Web analysts on the other. Web analytics tools keep gettting more and more complicated, to the point where some of the folks out there are simply asking the question: “Can we go back to a tool that’s less complicated?”.

So my personal opinion on the matter is: In 99% of the cases, more reports won’t help. In 99% of the cases, less will be more, and therefore, and yes, you should try Google Analytics.

Usually at that time of the dicussion I get a list of objections, which are:

Objection 1 (most common): We don’t want Google to have access to our site data. We spend ridiculous amounts of money with them, and we are afraid of them using this information against us.

Answer: Google’s got a good track record for business integrity and given their dominant position, I think this is a low risk. In fact, what information could they possibly use, and for what reason? Yes, they could figure out where you’re also buying your clicks from, and the volumes. Then decide to discount or not discount your click costs based on the information. But would that make a huge difference to them anyways? They own the SEM market, and pretty much have all the pricing power they want already.

Objection 2: Google Analytics’ too simple for our business needs.

Answer: While it’s possible that Google Analytics might not meet all your business requirements, it’s highly unlikely. For one, the GA has a pretty competitive featureset. But most importantm, this goes back to the classic mistake buyers make when evaluating Web analytics vendors: i.e. picking the tool which has the most reports and the flashiest UI’s — and ignoring the most important part of the Web analytics equation: people. It’s the people who will make your analytics investment work, not the tools.

Objection 3: Google doesn’t have support.

Answer: I don’t have any information on this. But I’ve used GA for the last 3-4 years now and I haven’t seen many bugs lately (they’ve been very good fixing their initial problems).

Objection 4: Google doesn’t have professional services.

Answer: They don’t but they have certified professional. And if you’re looking for Web analytics services, there are plenty of Web analytics consulting boutiques out there. I have too many friends in this industry to start a list here — but if you’re looking for names, drop me an email and I’ll help you.

Objection 5 (hot question these days): Should we run them side by side with Omniture?

Answer: IT folks will argue that having Omniture and GA side by side will slow down the page (you’re adding to the page load with another JS that’s typically 15-20KB). I think that’s a fair statement. I frequently see pages waiting for the google-analytics.com server response (typically people running multiple analytics technologies), which impacts page performance but also the accuracy of your reports. On the other hand, the average page size is now over 200KB, and another Web analytics tag certainly isn’t going to all of the sudden kill your site.

And my final words of wisdom… Everybody that’s been in this industry long enough knows that people are the critical success factor in any Web analytics project. My recommendation is to under-invest in tools, over-invest in people. That’s what’s going to make it all work.

Now that I’ve cleared this question, can you ask me about my new video commerce startup instead next time we meet at a cocktail ?

posted from iPhoneSlide.com

Finally got a moment to login to my hosting provider and pay the dues, which means the ugly “account suspended” message is gone and the blog’s back up. I don’t know about other bloggers, but after close to 4 years of blogging now, I’ve realized this blogging thing isn’t really something I feel is high priority in my life. Besides, I don’t have anything smart to say every week, not even every month… or in a year. And Twitter, Facebook and others are better places for publishing informal content from time to time. Just easier.

I know I’m not the only one. Amongst my blogging friends, I’ve found two groups forming over the years. Casual bloggers — and serious bloggers. Casual bloggers drop a blog post once in a while, say every quarter, to share some general updates or just to say something. Serious bloggers put a lot more thinking into it, some people I hear put in 10-20 hours a week, every week. And there are other groups too. The personal journal group. Or the corporate bloggers. In fact I keep hearing about these companies like IBM which encourage all their employees to have a blog, use Twitter, etc etc. Maybe that’s where it’s all going — blogging as a profesional tool.

Let’s move on to a few personal updates. Earlier this year I’ve started a new business called Liveclicker, in the video commerce space. I am really excited about this project because it’s got a grand vision, but also very exciting tactical steps to get to it. I will have many opportunities to share this vision later this year, early 2009 when we launch. Currently we are working with top-notch beta partners in the eRetail space, which is highly motivating.

And now a few words about a conference I’ve just attended, Internet Retailer 2008. Gigantic event, with lots of interesting people and many vendors pitching. I have three candid remarks,

(1)  Some vendors still think they call pull up the buzz words, the free tee-shirts and fine dinners to impress their prospects. On Tuesday at a sponsored evening event, I got a non-stop 15-min pitch of a “marketing” dude talking about some personalization technology invented by another dude from Amazon, that’s supposed to increase sales between 10 and 13% with no implementation work, etc, etc. I tortured the guy a little and asked the tough tech questions. At the end of it, the 25-something year-old guy just gave up on me and dropped exactly this: “Well, I’m a Stanford Computer Science Major so you have to believe me when I say this”. And he still had not asked me a single question about what my background was, what were my interests, etc.

(2) I was actually impressed by the large number of new companies in the personalization/recommendation space, and we do seem to have gone full-circle on that too. I personally think that the algorithms haven’t gotten better than 5-6 years ago, but with eCommerce platforms maturing and everyone looking at that micro conversion increase, anywhere, such technologies become interesting again.

(3) I’m under the impression (perhaps I’m mistaken) that affiliate marketing is making a strong come-back. All the major networks were at the show, and I saw a few new interesting approaches that blend social networking concepts with actionable and credible marketing programs.

And this last thought as a mental note for the future - the hot question on everyone’s lips: what’s social e-commerce?

It’s not often when you see some of the brightest people I know come together for lunch and have a nice chat about web analytics - in the pic, Steve Bernstein (eBay/Paypal), Avinash Kaushik (Google), and Bob Page (Yahoo). I’m holding the camera since I did not want to bring down the average IQ in the photo

posted from iPhoneSlide.com

It’s 12:45pm, I’m working on some time-sensitive things for Liveclicker, and then all of the sudden, Vista forces me to reboot (?). I try to get away from that, no luck.

All right, I’ll reboot. Now Vista is upgrading itself before shutting down (10 mins) - and, upon rebooting, it’s now installing updates one after another (see pic).

As of 1:10pm I still can’t use my PC and am typing this on my iPhone… You’ve got to be kidding!

posted from iPhoneSlide.com

There am I again on one of favorite topic - differences between Americans and the French, or Europeans in general. This week I had lunch with a successful European entrepreneur, CEO of a €10M/year Internet business. In discussing a few more personal updates, one theme that struck me was this permanent concern, almost obsession, for what could happen if […]. Would we still exist? Would I be able to find another job? Would I be able to survive?

Having been in this country for almost 10 years now, I’m starting to wonder. Do we Americans have too much faith in our economy, ignoring the troubling signs others are more sensitive to? Probably. But at least we’re little happier.

posted from iPhoneSlide.com

I don’t expect anyone to be particularly happy about JP Morgan buying off Bear Stearns for $2 a share - with the Fed supporting the transaction with a $30B loan to JP. But what worries me more than anything is this sort of downward spiral the economy is in right now. Subprime crisis, recession looming on the horizon, and a terribly weak dollar.

This type of economic environment directly affects entrepreneurs, because (a) access to capital (VCs or banks) is harder, and (b) customers generally tighten up their budgets and postpone their technology investments till things get better.

I’ve lived through the 2000-2002 technology recession and learned a few lessons. First, cash is king. Startups with soft business models (like advertising) will feel the pinch, and this is the time to nail that business model before it’s too late. Second, it’s not just about surviving the recession. It’s about leaving the recession with a strong position as a company to start growing fast again. Keep investing in your technology. Keep listening to your customers. Keep believing in what you do.

And last, no matter what, good times will come back. And so will future recessions. That’s just part of the game.

posted from iPhoneSlide.com