At Semphonic we've wrestled with the notion of whether web analytics is easy or hard for the better part of a decade and a half (myself for the half portion) and, like a good referee, we come down squarely in the middle -- sort of.  A deep dive analysis is by nature challenging.  It involves pulling data, reacting to the most interesting components of the data, adjusting your data pull accordingly and repeating.  Over and over and over, until you have merged off the superhighway of data down, veered sharply on a surface street and made your way down a single file path to actionable insight.  It is the reaction, the human element, which will always make doing analysis hard.

This translation and transformation from complex deep dive data to straightforward analysis deck is, admittedly, easier said than done.  It's something Semphonic over the years has tweaked, changed entirely, gotten wrong, gotten right, gotten wrong again, but through it all improved upon.  I wouldn't call our approach today perfect (to paraphrase French Laundry Chef Thomas Keller -- perfection is fleeting, once you obtain it, it is already gone), but I will attest that it has gotten pretty darn good. 

Functionalism is used to explain the complex inner workings of a website in plain English by chunking a website up based on the purpose, or function, of each chunk.  Essentially Functionalism asks the question 'why did you build X?' and based on the answer classifies the page into a group.  To illustrate this, let's do a bit of role playing --

Meanwhile, we utilize Use Cases to bring in the human element, which is too often missed, into an analysis.  By talking about real groups of people on your web site their size, issues and successes become tangible.  It is one thing to talk about an abstract population segment defined by a user who enters on a Google paid search ad, lands on the home page and immediately navigate to the store locator tool and another thing to discuss the real people coming to your site with the sole purpose of locating a retail outlet.  Good Use Cases don't need to be explained or clarified when presenting them to execs, which makes it all that much easier to say there are exactly X thousand of a type of person, with Y thousand experiencing a specific issue and that the issue is having Z impact on your bottom line.

If those last lines sound a bit like a sales pitch, it's only because they are.  On July 29th Gary Angel will be hosting a webinar to walk through Semphonic's Advanced Analysis program, where Functionalism and Use Case are core pieces.  The program is designed to make deep dive analysis a central and valuable piece of the decision making process.  Regardless of if you are a manager who is considering Semphonic to guide their advanced deep dive analytics program or a do it yourself analyst, the webinar should be of interest.  As Gary put's it "...be forewarned – this is a sales presentation. On the other hand, it’s not without plenty of real content – perhaps more content than some people’s content presentations." 

It’s mid July.  Stepping outside your likely to get a whiff of smoky ribs, boiling chlorine and, if the wind is just right, intellectual X Change.  Yes, the X Change Conference is rapidly approaching and less than two months away. 

This year the main conference promises to be stellar, with the key note by founding father of web analytics and an impressive huddle lineup, but I'm most excited about Think Tank.  Think Tank, which is the newest addition to the X Change lineup, is a series of classes taught by Semphonic and Web Analytics Demystified practitioners that cover everything from building the most functional Excel report of your life to tagging a Web 2.0 site to maximizing value from web analytics within your organization.  The idea is that regardless of if you are a analyst, developer, manager or some hybrid, you'll be able to find three perfect classes amidst the many offered that make you better at what you do.

Our promise, as with all of X Change, is that the classes will contain no fluff, no sales and no bull s**t. In short, you won't walk out of Think Tank with the same sinking feeling that your vendor sponsored training left you with.

Think Tank is really a coming out party for many of the folks at Semphoic.  Sure you have the rare opportunity to take microscopic (in participant size, not content value) classes from Eric Peterson and Gary Angel, but those guys get out all the time.  People like me have toiled for years in the annals of Semphonic, building report after report, doing analysis after analysis and now finally we are being set free. We promise to be socially awkward, pasty white from the lack of sun exposure and covered in web analytics grime be we come packed to the gills with years of daily hands on experience. 

In one of my classes, where I will be discussing building dynamic Excel reports, I'll be backed by the experience of building 15 - 20 large scale, dynamic report and in the neighborhood of 500 total web analytics reports.  I won't break it down into hours, but that’s a truckload of trial and error that participants will never have to wade through.  And Semphonic is no report farm.  Everything we do is custom based on client’s specific needs, so the breath of report types and diversity of clients I have worked with allows me to have a variety of vantage points and strategies.  My name isn't one that wows anyone in the industry, but I, as well as all the other Think Tank instructors, promise to pack a knowledgeable punch.

To quote a used car salesman I admire, Think Tank "is a screamin' deal!"  With three classes going for $599 for X Change attendees or $899 if purchased alone, you'd be hard pressed to find a better way to spend your budget.  And while you’re at it, you might as well stay a few more days for the world's premiere web analytics conference. 

Click here to register.

My colleague, Phil Kemelor, raised an interesting question when he asked is Google Analytics is the elephant in the room for Omniture.  To me, the resounding answer must be YES.  Google Analytis, especially after its recent update, has and will continue to pluck away low to mid range clients from SiteCatalyst.  For better or worse, Omniture has shown an unwillingness to drop annual Site Catalyst contracts below the $10,000 to $14,000 threshold, which effectively removes a potential client base. If I were Omniture the part that would scare me the most is how closely Google Analytics sits from Google's core product.  The recent recession, has shown that Google probably stretched their arms too far away from what matters most to them: ad revenue.  But Google Analytics isn't an example of Google Video, its use has a direct relationship with ad spending.  Should the Google Dragon awake from his slumber tomorrow and decide to truly invest in Google Analytics, the fair maiden atop her perch in Orem should be very afraid.

But I'm not writing this blog to support Phil and his Elephant theory.  Instead, I wanted to point out another competitor to our friends in Orem -- themselves.  

The typical Google Analytics users, with the low volumes and small investment in web analytics, sit at one end of the spectrum, while mega volume, mondo budget properties reside at the opposite end.  The middle group is those who are best suited as Omniture clients, particularly with SiteCatalyst.  They likely demand the flexibility, number of custom variables and variety of reporting options available in SiteCatalyst.  And, more importantly, their usage volumes fit nicely within the SiteCatalyst framework.

The super sites of the world are a different story.  Although it is the pockets of these companies that Omniture dips into the deepest, SiteCatalyst can hardly claim to fit all their needs. With the largest properties, variable cardinality limits, even when bumped to 500,000, can come into play just days into a month.  This can leave huge volumes of key data, such as external search keywords, completely untracked.  Even in the instance where everything in a particular variable slot is tracked (or a user is content with a fraction of the actual tracking), pulling up reports can be like pulling teeth. As the volume of variables in a report increases, so do the chances it will time out before the user ever becomes privy to the data.  Reloading then becomes a game of Orem Roulette.  Large site users that struggle to pull up large reports can forget about taking advantage of even basic sorting functions.  Care to see a list of top brand keywords?  Feel free to download and sort it yourself.

For the largest properties key SiteCatalyst tools like SAINT and ReportBuilder, which are so useful for midsized properties, become afterthoughts.  SAINT quickly becomes cumbersome even the most basic classifications are like brain surgery when the volume of variables are staggering.  ReportBuilder suffers from the same timing out and sorting issues as the SiteCatalyst user interface.  

Without endearing themselves to the largest and most profitable clients, Omniture always runs the risk of seeing them walk away when another vendor creates a superior super enterprise level tool (see first paragraph) or a comparable vendor offers a deal that cannot be refused.

It reality it seems unlikely that there will be a mass exodus by Omniture's largest clients anytime in the foreseeable future.  But I hope that doesn't lull Omniture into a false sense of security.  Forget the ohh and ahh enhancements, the folks in Orem should make the most basic product features functional for their largest clients.