Reading some great perspectives about the report both from Web Analytics guru, Avinash Kaushik, and sector God Father, Jim Sterne, I missed comments about other findings that I humbly thought would be interest.

Avinash tweeted, quite understandably, about it in the following terms: “The only report U need on online measurement & #wa http://tr.im/nW8B D/L sample report. Why good? Pragmatic, 100% sourced fm customers, no BS”.
Google Analytics is on the rise, assuring its position in the Web Analytics space, as the report confirms. But like any leader, contestation is on the rise as well as recently following a French post, discussion has amplified about how GA attributes conversation.
Additionally, the report does not mention Yahoo! Web Analytics (former IndexTools), the other great free tool out there on the market, but does point to “one limitation is the inability to tie up analytics with data at an individual customer level. Google faces a problem on this front because it already has to contend with criticism that it has too much data, and this is a problem that worries businesses as well as consumers.”
The double sides of a coin: we want more individual level data to really drill-down and try to make our data sources less conflicting vs. worry about Google having all this personal data. Let’s see how Y!WA stacks up to that assumption. In the mean time, you can also check out some good writing by Dennis Mortensen

Talking about tools, what actually first struck me was the reason why 31% of respondents don’t use GA: “it isn’t sophisticated enough for their requirements”. Even though I can imagine this to be true for some companies more sophisticated in the practice of doing Web Analytics, I also have a hunch this stems from disinformation coming from competing vendors! Call it a female intuition if you want but fact remains, if this is the case, such practice doesn’t resonate to me as being a sound long-term strategy!

I also couldn’t avoid noting Omniture’s progression with 42% of market share according to the responding companies! Let’s just hope that with all the people Omniture’s been training through Europe, they will actually also let other supply-side actors, besides themselves, support their clients. Let’s say that this process could need some tweaking imho.

Just like the pillars of a company are its stakeholders, customers & staff; for Web Analytics, I see vendors, consultants & end clients. And it’s in this later part where I find the Econsultancy report fascinating as it distinguishes answers from the client-side with those from the supply-side, giving a voice to this fragmented army of web agencies, self-employed consultants & specialist web analytics consultancies.
Because let’s face it, these non vendors supply-side actors more often than not “recommend a tool for their clients to use” or “make a decision on behalf of their clients”. And for some, like Web Agencies, the relationship with the client reaches far beyond Web Analytics even if, some time ago, before the commoditization of its practice, WA could be seen as a differentiating factor. It’s not anymore about selling licenses and with margins below 40%, lets be honest, it’s bad for this type of KPI!

It’s a difficult balancing act doing Web Analytics within a web agency. Eternally swinging with vendors between love - to sell their solution - & hate because technical roadmaps aren’t always discussed & shared and competition on services is increasing.
Competing also against Media Agencies, who hold another side of the crystal ball with their campaigns i.e. traffic acquisition and I’ll refer to Eric’s post about attribution as issues are far from being resolved in this space!
I’ve witnessed it often: discussions about access to a client’s Google AdWords account to tie the data to the GA account, explaining to some young trainee how to add the correct tags to the landing URLs. URL, you want me to spell it for you?

Unfortunately, this lack of incentive for collaboration, which is totally understandable on all mentioned sides, doesn’t do much for data transparency & sharing in order to make sure we all work towards the client’s goal, making money today and in the future and uncover those blessed insights. Sharing remains the key in order to align those processes and make sure all actors work towards this common goal. Unfortunately, not all clients are savvy enough to understand their pivotal role in this dance of (expensive) service providers!

It also looks like the equilibrium between budget allocations between technology & human resources is slowly but surely reverting from an over investment in tools (would I dare to write that?) that should magically point towards insights. Just like Word should be able to magically write by itself a great trilogy such as Millenium
Ok, we’re not at Avinash’s 10/90 rule yet but what I basically concluded from the report is that those who get it, get it. Those who don’t, aren’t going to take the risk in these times to make the leap of faith. For now.

The market has thankfully evolved towards a commoditization of web analytics services. It’s not anymore about how to tag this new Flash website or Ajax application, a lot of very smart people can help with that today, partially thanks to the GAAC – Google Analytics Authorized Consultant – network imho.
However, resources remain scarce and for that, supply-side companies still have a role to play, if they can make it work for them, business model wise.

And that’s where my great fears lie for the moment. I’m afraid all those great, but fragmented consultants, are going to get stuck in this tinny Web Analytics field that could bring so much to a companies’ reflection and dialogue with its clients, stakeholders & staff. And that’s what I want to discuss with the smart guys from Sapient tomorrow in Germany

I’ll finish by sharing my favourite quote from the report “Knowledge - there’s almost too much information out there, every time I learn something new it all just gets bigger - which is exciting as well as frustrating.” And agreeing with Avinash recommended reading for anyone serious about the industry!

I’m off to Moorgate. Be well & prosper!

Fortunately most business owners have learned from past mistakes and are showing interest in measuring the effect of their investment into mobile. But measuring mobile isn’t easy — the sheer diversity of technologies involved and the rapid evolution of the industry has created a monsterous landscape of devices, communication protocols, and requirements.

As a result dozens of companies have sprung up, all making claim to a unique ability to measure the mobile opportunity. Unfortunately some of these companies have decided that relying on hype, hyperbole, and sometimes outright lies are a better sales strategy than building a great product with a unique value proposition. We have seen CEOs bash other CEOs, sales people obfuscate their identity and try and provide “objective” answers, and antics that can only be described as “juvenile.”

Because the mobile opportunity is so great Web Analytics Demystified started taking a closer look at measurement earlier this year. I was fortunate enough to be able to rely on the expertise of folks like Michiel Berger and Thomas Pottjegort at Nedstat, the mobile team at NBC, dozens of analytics end-users, and some of the brightest product managers in the analytics sector tasked with integrating mobile into existing digital measurement offerings.

What I found was a series of surprising truths about how mobile analytics is evolving. Nedstat was kind enough to sponsor this research — and clear disclosure: Nedstat has been measuring and integrating mobile data into their web analytics offerings for years — and I am happy to announce the availablity of this research in a new white paper titled “The Truth about Mobile Analytics.”

You can download this paper from the Nedstat web site for free (but they do ask your name, email, and company name):

DOWNLOAD THE TRUTH ABOUT MOBILE ANALYTICS

We are also holding a special webcast on the subject on June 23rd at 10 AM Central European Time (CET) which is unfortunately quite late in the evening for those of us in the U.S. but quite well timed for Nedstat’s customers. I suspect the webcast will either be repeated or rebroadcast at a later date and time.

SIGN UP TO JOIN THE MOBILE ANALYTICS WEBCAST ON JUNE 23

Also, if you’re really into mobile and mobile analytics please consider joining us at the X Change Conference September 9, 10, and 11 in San Francisco. More details will be out next week but our mobile sessions will be led by Greg Dowling from Nokia (a company with some knowledge of mobile I am told.)

I encourage everyone to download the paper and give it a read, regardless of your position on mobile and mobile analytics today. As always I welcome your feedback and commentary.

Brett Crosby, Matt Cutler, John Pestana, and Bob Page are four names that every web analytics insider knows. Co-founders of Urchin, NetGenesis, Omniture, and Accrue respectively and now senior managers at Google Analytics, Visible Measures, ObservePoint, and Yahoo! Web Analytics, each of these gentlemen continue to shape digital measurement to this day.

In the keynote session we’ll be focusing on the past, present, and future of digital measurement. These guys were active participants in the early foundations of the industry — hell, Matt Cutler co-authored with Jim Sterne the seminal work Emetrics: Business Metrics for the New Economy back in 2000 which more or less kicked off the whole ball of wax — and all four have a history of participating in the early days of Emetrics in Santa Barbara (which is the model for the X Change, an intimate gathering of peers and friends.)

The audience will have a chance to ask questions.

Registration for X Change 2009 is now open and you will save 10% off the cost of registration if you sign up to join us before July 31st! I have more information about the X Change here in the “Community” section of the site and will be adding more content very soon!

I look forward to meeting many of you at the Founding Father’s keynote at X Change 2009!

Working, living & breathing Web Analytics on a daily basis for a long time, I still get the question about whether Europe is lagging behind.

NO, no and no. We’re not behind when it comes to Web Analytics!
Europe has it’s own set of challenges: multiple currencies on top of the Euro; multiple languages, I’m in Belgium: we’ve got 3 official ones!; different cultures and ways of doing business.
We’re basically juggling with global brands that want to assure their penetration on the old continent and local companies who are battling to assure global supremacy – well, not all – while taking advantage of what Schengen delivered us from back in ’92.

So, if you’re in Web Analytics, or would like to be, and you’re in Europe, don’t think the grass is greener on the other side of the pond! There is some great stuff going on right here & right now, closer to you than you might think.
A powerful community is building up on a European level with Spain recently merging it’s WA members (AEWA) with the WAA, amongst others. Events are taking place all over Europe debating fascinating topics such as: WA implementation, your company’s social media strategy, the automotive sector, WA for the public sector, WA’s business model for web agencies and complementarity between SEO & WA. Who said Europe was lagging behind?

Great events are lining up for the next couple of weeks all over Europe with over 300 attendees gathering in & on:

• 17/6: Copenhagen, Denmark where Steve Jackson from TrainersHouse will be speaking about the Cult of Analytics, based on experiences with companies like MTV, Vodaphone & Finish Nokia;
• 17/6: London, UK where yours truly will be initiating the debate about Your Social Media Strategy;
• 17/6: Lille, France right between Brussels & Paris! where, thanks to Nicolas Mallo, Toyota’s Michael Notte will join Julien Coquet for what I’m sure will be some super interesting discussions, before cocktails ;-);
• 18/6: Düsseldorf, Germany where yours truly will discuss at Sapient about the Web Analytics business model for Web Agencies, just after Peter Pletsch talks about his experience at meinestadt.de;
• 24/6: Lausanne, Switzerland where Jean-Marc Vandenabeele & Emmanuel Breton will share their views upon interaction and complimentarily between SEO & Web Analytics;
• 24/6: Glasgow, UK closes this list of European events for June.

So, stop wining about US supremacy! Go out and make sure you catch one of these events before the summer. Share your thoughts, questions, hopes, doubts, aspirations, and show that Europe certainly has a great part to play.
Like we say in Belgium: L’Union fait la force! Unity gives us strength.

Imagine my surprise when I fired up Stephane Hamel’s WASP Firefox Add-in and browsed over to http://sas.com. It turns out that they are using Google Analytics on their site. How ironic.

As good as Google Analytics is, I couldn’t imagine any other analytics provider endorsing the competition this way. Omniture has four tags on its site, all from Omniture. Webtrends has five Web Trends tags plus Quantcast (strange, but understandable) — at least they don’t have Google Analytics. Coremetrics uses (you guessed it) Coremetrics.

Oddly enough, WASP did not detect SAS using their own tool. Now in fairness, I doubt WASP detects SAS, but, nonetheless, this looks pretty bad for SAS. Maybe SAS is simply engaging in competitive research. Can anyone shed some light on this?

I asked our Marketing Director, Juan Ribero, to give me his input on the subject and here is what he wrote:

Everybody likes a fast car. I’ve never heard a single person utter the words, “I wish my car was slower.” The problem is that just because a car is fast does not mean we’re willing to deal with anything less than the utmost comfort and luxury. Only the most dedicated automotive enthusiasts would deal with a daily-driver that had no air conditioning or power windows simply because it was able to move down the road quicker than others.

Analogously, everybody wants their website to be really fast but few people are willing to give up on having items such as analytics tracking codes, personalization, rich media, numerous images, etc… At CableOrganizer.com we’ve spent a lot of time and money making sure that we provide the most useful information and content to our potential customers in the way that is preferable to them. The problem is that because our customers are a particularly savvy group and our products particularly complex, this has resulted in our pages having A LOT of content and this affected our website speed. People facing problems like this essentially have two options:

1. Look for a middle path balance by eliminating just enough content to ensure that their website is fast enough.
2. Invest in website optimization and content delivery to ensure that they could maintain the same amount of content while improving the speed of our website.

Since we were/are facing the dilemma of always wanting our site to be faster and had already dived headlong into the second option, we had to know exactly how much more money we would make (if there was a difference at all) from a faster website and how much we could be losing if our site slowed down for whatever reason. That way, we would know exactly how much resources we could devote towards speeding up the site and find out once and for all if services such as Akamai were worth the expense.

We used Tealeaf to find this information but SAS has this functionality as well and I’m sure something can be rigged up with Google Analytics partially using the Event Tracking functionality like the people at Panalysis. http://www.panalysis.com/tracking-webpage-load-times.php

First thing we did to figure this out was to use Tealeaf in order to make events based upon the load time on the client side (this is out of the box once you install Tealeaf’s Javascript SDK). We made sure to get really granular assuming that a 0.25 second difference was significant. We went from less than ¼ second to over 20 seconds.

We let the data build up for a month (getting over 200 sales a day so that a month was enough for statistical significance). We then segmented all of our sessions looking at load time averages with the stipulation that no maximum load time was ever more than 3 seconds above the average. We made the assumption that if somebody had an average load time of 0.5 seconds (very fast by most standards) but took 15 seconds loading a single page (usually indicative of a major problem) then their session behavior would be contaminated by that anomaly and it would not be indicative of other customers with sessions of that average speed.

We then analyzed each segment and saw what percentage of each segment actually purchased. These load-time derived conversion rates were quite telling. We found out that users who averaged less than 1 second of loading per page without any significant deviations throughout the session converted at a much higher percentage than those who took an average of 2 seconds. Although intuitively some would be inclined to say that the difference is slight between a second and two, our data proved that there was a statistically significant difference in conversion rate between those two numbers. As one would expect, the difference got more pronounced as the averages got higher and higher with the final extremities proving that our conversion rate for people who average a load time of 7 or 8 seconds was shameful (there may be other factors here like the fact that they’re mobile or dial up users abroad of course).

We were then able to see within these analyzed segments whether or not the average order value changed between those with low page load times and those with high load times and found that there was no consistent difference. This could be because some people interested in big orders would deal with a slow website whereas some business customers willing to make big orders would usually have faster connections and therefore lower load times (these are just my hypotheses.) I imagine that the data would have been a lot more telling regarding average order value if we had segmented it out by product type as naturally some of our impulse buys have a more elastic demand than those items to which we have the best pricing and/or are exclusive distributors. This would have been an interesting study to run but the further segmentation into product types may have diluted our numbers to the point of losing statistical significance so we judged it to be beyond the scope of this test.

As such, we accepted the lack of correlation between average order value and page load time for the time being and used our combined average order value to estimate how much more revenue we could generate on a monthly basis if we increased the speed of the website by an average of 1 second, 2 seconds, etc… and how much we would lose if the site slowed down by those intervals.

We found that the increased revenue that would come on a monthly basis was significant enough (even for a 1 second difference that only affected 1/10 of the visitors) that revenue allocation to the optimization of the website could be done in a quite liberal way. If we had not already been using Akamai for years, it would have been very interesting to do the same report before and after their implementation to see not only how much they lowered the average load time but exactly what their ROI is. Nonetheless, given the fact that most CDN services are relatively affordable, they would have to be really ineffective in order to not be a cost effective model for increasing revenue.

So, what’s the story?
Recent events have shown that EU Telecoms Commissioner, Viviane Reding, not to be opposed to the French HADOPI law. But she DID open an infringement proceeding against the UK government about the use of a behavioural advertising technology known as “Phorm” by internet service providers. My friend, Steve Jackson, already blogged about his privacy concerns around BT’s use of Phorm last summer.

What is HADOPI? will you ask. Good question!
The French HADOPI law stands for “Haute Autorité pour la Diffusion des Oeuvres et de la Protection des droits sur l’Internet”. The idea is that people illegally downloading copyrighted content through the Internet will be sanctioned. On claim or denunciation, HADOPI follows a 3-strike procedure:

1. A warning email is sent to the connection owner, defined by the IP address, inviting him to install a filter on his own connection. The ISP allowing for this connection should monitor activity.
2. The second step is put into motion 6 months after the first: the same warning is sent by certified mail. On failure to comply or accusation of repeated offenses by the copyright holders, their representatives, the ISP or the HADOPI, in the year following the reception of the certified letter, the third step of the procedure starts.
3. The ISP is required to suspend the internet service for the internet connection, object of the claim, for 2 months to 1 year. The connection owner is blacklisted and third party ISPs are prevented from providing internet connections. This doesn’t interrupt billing. Eventual charges involved by the service termination are at the connection owner expense.

No recourse to a judicial court is possible for the first 2 steps of the procedure, and the last step is not stoppable by judicial recourse. So basically, the charge of the proof is on the connection owner!

First, I wonder how technically this is going to be monitored with dynamic IPs and all. Minor detail say the French authorities.
I won’t even start about the saga that this law brought upon itself since April 2008 in France and in Europe. Let’s say that’s just French spicing on top of how this text was bullied into French law and then lobbied heavily by Mr. Nicolas Sarkozy at a European level.
I’m not surprised either to read that the project of this law spun from a task force led by Denis Oliviennes, CEO of the main French record seller Fnac, who’s business model is dependent upon copyright enforcement.
I sadly smile when I read that Mrs. Albanel thinks the Internet should grow up and the illegal downloading is part of some childhood disease. She should go back to Economics 1O1!

Indeed, access to information, through the Internet connections is profoundly changing the way we are living & consuming. Some sectors - music industry, newspapers, etc. - will be disturbed by this evolution more than others, independent of the number of “patches” you’d want to grant them to allow them to survive in these difficult times.
We’ve heard a lot about government bailouts of banks. As a law abiding & tax paying citizen, I’m not thrilled that public money was pumped into those institutions but I understand that our financial system needs to be stable.
What I do condemn is short sightedness in the likes of Mr. Sarkozy who, on top of HADOPI, also decided to support French newspapers by giving them substantial grants. He should join Mrs. Albanel in an Economics 1O1 class, IMHO!

Hence, I just can’t shake this feeling that between those responsible for legislation and ongoing technological evolution, the gap is growing. Those responsible for legislation, creation & enforcement, have great difficulties understanding what all this Internet thing is about. Hence, public money is being put in wrong places and they are legislating on topics they are ill advised about!
As technology evolves, the need for national & European safeguards is growing.
Amongst my most urgent topics, I want Europe to take a clear stance on privacy.
Privacy is going to be one of the major topics of our century and without clear guidelines, without clear understanding of technical capabilities today and in the future, our legislative body will continue to be influenced by the most prominent lobby groups.

The fact that the European Commission sees a potential problem with Phorm in the UK but totally fails to see any possible infringement of personal protection with HADOPI in France is totally beyond me.
Belgian legislation is clear, until now, in the sense that those responsible are not the consumers viewing the content but the content providers. They are the ones infringing the law, not the other way around!
If the European Commission does not rethink it’s stance on the French HADOPI law, risk exists that this law will be applicable to other member states in due time!

So my question today is: between Phorm & HADOPI, where’s the difference? How come the first is possibly condemned while the later seems to live safely within it’s borders, possibly being implemented as soon as possible?

Mrs. Reding, your latest speech about Internet of the Future: What Policies to make it happen? mentions that “the Internet of tomorrow must preserve openness. It must also be based on the right governance principles“.
You talk of security and mention privacy but too vaguely: “In this domain, the technological and scientific experts have to work hand in hand with the policy makers“. As far as I know, you are a policy maker and I thank you for your excellent work on the EU Roaming Regulation .Would you also be so kind as to review your position on HADOPI, please? Maybe after the elections, if it’s not too late…

This year’s conference is being held at the extra fancy-schmancy St. Regis hotel in San Francisco, immediately adjacent to San Francisco MoMa and as central as you can possibly get while still suffering Starwood 5-star luxury accommodations. In a word, the venue is SWEET!

But, as with past X Change events, the venue will immediately become secondary to the excellent conversation, excellent company, and excellent insights being shared. As with the 2007 and 2008 events we plan to have the brightest practitioners from the best companies leading the conversation. Confirmed participants already include Best Buy, Intuit, Nokia, AOL, Forrester Research, Charles Schwab, Turner Broadcasting Systems, and more!

Also, as Gary alludes to in his post about the conference, I had a pretty good idea for this year’s conference keynote … we’re still pinning down details but I can honestly say the keynote this year is something that none of us have seen before at a web analytics conference or event.

We’re also excited to announce that on September 9th we will be holding the first-ever X Change Think Tank training day! Credit Gary this one, and it makes perfect sense to me given the strength of the Semphonic crew, but we will be taking the ideals of the X Change and extending them to an extremely intimate learning environment. I will be leading two classes and I hope to get my new business partner Aurélie Pols to lead one or two as well!

If you have budget for training in 2009 I definitely encourage you to have a look at the Think Tank and feel free to ping me directly for more details.

One of the things I love the most about the X Change is the transparency we have and that we learn from our participants. Every attendee helps us make the X Change a better conference, every year! To this end I am actively seeking input about the conference via this site, Twitter, email, … heck, you can call me directly if you have a good idea!

You can register now for the 2009 X Change and will save 10% if you do so before July 31st! Head on over to the Semphonic web site and start the registration process — and don’t forget this is an event that has sold out every year it has been offered! Because we limit the conference to 100 participants we fully expect to sell out in advance again … don’t get caught waiting!

I hope to see you at the X Change!

After two years I am very proud of the work I’ve done and the clients I’ve worked with. I have had the opportunity to work with some of the best brands, the best companies, and the most visionary management teams who are actively wokring to do more than simply “run reports” and instead want to actively compete on web analytics. That said, I have come to the realization that there is no way I could satisfy the global need on my own … so I did what every good business owner should do: I went out and got someone smarter, more eloquent, and better looking to be my business partner!

At Emetrics last week in San Jose I was incredibly excited to announce that Aurélie Pols, Europe’s most widely known and well respected web analytics consultant, has joined Web Analytics Demystified as a Principal Consultant. Aurélie brings depth and experience in web analytics that is rare anywhere in the world and exceedingly rare in Europe, she was the first consultant to break the “one vendor” stranglehold in Europe that forced firms to work exclusively with a single technology, and she brings a brilliance to the explanation and use of these tools that amazes even me.

Now Aurelie and I will be working together in Europe to “demystify web analytics” and help companies make significantly better use of their technology investment. Between the two of us and our contacts across Europe Web Analytics Demystified will now be providing a far greater level of service than was previously possible.

I highly recommend that you read Aurélie’s “Hello, World” blog post and start following her at aurelie.webanalyticsdemystified.com. If you have any questions about Aurélie’s practice or how Web Analytics Demystified can help you regardless of where you’re located, please don’t hesitate to contact us directly.

I hope you will welcome me in welcoming Aurélie to the Web Analytics Demystified team.

That was in 2003 and the start of OX2, which turned out to be one of the leading independent Web Analytics consulting services agencies on the European market. We sold OX2 to the LBi Group, n° 1 Independent Interactive Agency in Europe, in 2008.

Eric asked me another question some years later. This blog post should explain why.

WebTrends’ Log Analyzer first landed on my European desk (Brussels based, Belgium) in 1999. I felt excited as I’d started my career -for amongst others Swiss Life- as a business analyst, used to answering the most challenging questions coming from the commercial &/or marketing departments but frustrated by the lack of available data.

The DotCom era and it’s promises would finally allow me to unleash my analytical creativity! I got hooked & despite encouraging video presentations by Jason Burby, I felt alone while trying to get the most out of this magical data crunching wonderful discipline called Web Analytics.

My French speaking mum always told me I got into the business because my favorite word while growing up in the Netherlands was “Pourquoi?”. This translates into Why in English and my feminine intuition tells me Jim Sterne might agree

Nonetheless, while finding refuge during the DotCom shake-out at the Deutsche Bank, I pledged that no one in Europe should ever feel that way! I met frowning René at a Master in Ebusiness. He’s very perseverant. So much so that we ended up building a company together, OX2, getting married and having a son, Luca.

Through OX2 and my blog, I found a voice and vehicle to share my thoughts. I still remember the time when most people in Europe wondered why I was actually bothering with this thing called Web Analytics! And I will certainly never forget the positive as well as the negative comments we received when I stated our independent position when it came to vendors. After all, it was & still is about what you get out of the tool, not the tool itself!

To be quite frank, I used Google Analytics’ release in November 2005 as an excuse to ramp up to such independence. Google once again helped pave the way & comforted us in our beliefs when Brett Crosby announced the release of their Website Optimizer while we had been building an A/B & MVT tool, imbedded into one of OX2’s content management systems, over the summer.

Stars were continuing to align when the great Avinash Kaushik also picked up on my incessant abuse of the written word to include it in his world top 10 of blogs on Web Analytics. I can still precisely recall my first acquaintance with Avinash, at the eMetrics in London back in 2006. His performance and comments remain unforgettable

Eric, then with pony tail, bluffed me even more with his VisualSciences demo a couple of months later at the eMetrics summit in Washington DC. Following that unique & thrilling experience and after some email exchanges, this fortunate and mind boggling encounter was followed by a call which included the invitation to join Web Analytics Demystified’s Board of Advisors.

A relationship of trust and mutual respect has been building up ever since between Eric and me. I thoroughly enjoy is no nonsense approach to Web Analytics, his openness of mind and is curiosity. He’s one of the rare people that keep on surprising me!

He allowed me to keep up with all that was going on in the field of Web Analytics while I was running around like a headless chicken, heading my WA team first at OX2, then at LBi. Interest for Web Analytics was picking up all over Europe!

Not taking it easy during that last year, where, keeping the promise I’d made to myself about sharing the love for Web Analytics (that’s a shameless plug for Brian Clifton), I also reached out to the LBi group’s network, ranging from Sweden to New York while answering questions fusing from Amsterdam to Milan.

I armed my Web Analytics European DreamTeam (WAEDT) very early on with the first GAAC certification in Europe, a WebTrends Insight Network label (shared then only with our future colleagues at LBi UK). I also turned out to be the first IndexTools (now Yahoo! Web Analytics) Certified Analyst and attended the Omniture certification. Lately, we’d been enjoying working with Unica for a couple of clients. Clients such as Toyota Motor Europe, ING, NATO, Schering Plough, Bayer Schering, the Belgian Social Security, Philips, Deutsche Bank, Danfoss … for which I had the pleasure to work through all these years.

During the last year, I also gave birth to my son, Luca, but unfortunately lost my blogging voice and basically my license to think…

Today, the integration of OX2 within LBi is over and done with. My Belgian/Dutch/Spanish son, Luca (yes, that’s an Italian name), is teething and starting to walk. I took a month off. It’s now time for me to move on to new challenges.

I’m thrilled & delighted to start up the European presence for Web Analytics Demystified Inc., working alongside Eric to help advanced clients in Web Analytics with their strategic roadmap in order to assure real value from their investment. It will allow me to express my opinion about the industry after too many months of silence. I strongly believe that our times yearn for Data Driven Decision Making: responsibility, accountability, transparency & ROI. Building on a “Competing on Analytics” strategic vision, companies should embrace data transparency and optimal (human) resources allocation in order to foster innovation through experimentation.

Europe, prepare to have Web Analytics demystified!