Brian’s offerings at Demystified will look a lot like Adam’s — audits of current implementations, strategic planning for testing and optimization readiness, systems integration architecture and support, and planning support for the entire end-to-end process of site and application optimization in the Enterprise. While Brian’s technology expertise is strongest on Test&Target, his knowledge of what it takes from a teams, governance, and process perspective to be successful transcends platforms and I believe will incredibly valuable to any large business trying to become agile in their optimization efforts.

Brian is taking a little time off before getting started mid-month but I will be adding his blog, a description of his offerings, and more about him to the site very soon. Clients are welcome to contact us directly to set up time to meet Brian (and if you’re not a client you can call too, that is if you have any interest in testing, optimization, or personalization.)

Brian will be with us at Emetrics, Adobe’s Summit in Salt Lake City, and of course he will be presenting at our own ACCELERATE event in Chicago on April 4th. If you’re at any of these events and would like to meet or connect with Brian, please drop me a note.

We hope you will join us in welcoming Brian to the team.

What’s more, as soon as Jim Sterne heard about our efforts, he and Matthew Finlay immediately donated three passes to the eMetrics Marketing Optimization Summit each year — how amazing is that! Tremendous thanks to Corry Prohens, Rob Seolas, Jim Sterne, and each of their teams for their support of our efforts at the Analysis Exchange.

Analysis Exchange members in good standing are encouraged to apply for scholarship funds. We are open to ideas but in general expect these funds to be used for things like:

• Pay partial travel or registration fees for conferences like ACCELERATE and eMetrics
• Pay annual membership fees for the Web Analytics Association or other professional groups
• Pay partial tuition to the University of British Columbia’s Web Analytics courses
• Pay partial costs for the Web Analytics Association’s certification
• Pay for books, software licenses, and so on

Quarterly awards will be up to $500 USD per selected applicant and I imagine we will give two or three away each quarter depending on the quality of applications we get. You need to be a member of Analysis Exchange in good standing and have earned very good scores on projects to be eligible.

I hope you’ll take a minute to learn more about the Analysis Exchange Scholarship. I also hope you’ve been helping in the Analysis Exchange and you’re excited to apply for this funding!

If you have any questions about these funds please don’t hesitate to reach out to our Executive Director Wendy Greco directly. I am also happy to answer questions.

Thanks

What these added sponsors mean to all of you is bigger budgets for Web Analytics Wednesday which we hope will lead to bigger and better gatherings. Whereas we typically limited reimbursement from the Global Fund in the past to around $100 USD, we are now able to provide larger sums based on need and demonstrated commitment to the event.

More. Free. Money.

If you have any questions about hosting a Web Analytics Wednesday or how these funds can be used please email me directly. Otherwise I hope you will join me in thanking all four of these companies for their generous support of the entire digital measurement community.  You can tweet them at @corryprohens, @observepoint, @opinionlab, and @splunk or let them know you appreciate their efforts in the comments below.

We resolve to continue to provide great value to our clients.

A consulting business like ours is only as good as the value we provide on an ongoing basis. To that end, all of us are committed to working closely with all of our clients to ensure we deliver business insights and recommendations designed to make our key stakeholders look like heroes within their organizations. While we are intensely proud of the work our client Best Buy has done to become more analytically-minded, we want all of our clients to appreciate the same type of high-visibility wins.

We resolve to have Demystified to evolve with our industry.

You don’t need to be an analyst to see that the “web analytics” industry is changing. Increasingly the work our clients do is less about the “web” and more about the entire digital world, and the people, process, and technology required to analyze and optimize the digital world are different than those we have used in the past. We started thinking about this transformation back in 2009, but at Web Analytics Demystified we are committed to adding resources and knowledge to be the best guides possible as our clients begin to leverage digital business intelligence and data sciences.

We resolve to continue to provide great support to the measurement community.

Web Analytics Demystified is fortunate to be more than just a consultancy, we are part of the foundation of the entire digital measurement community around the world. Through our Web Analytics Wednesday event series, our Analysis Exchange educational efforts, our support for the Web Analytics Association, and now our ACCELERATE conference series we are able to connect with analysts around the world. In 2012 we resolve to do more for the community — watch our web site for news in the coming weeks about all of these efforts.

We resolve to provide more web analytics education in 2012 than ever before.

Our educational effort, Analysis Exchange, has succeeded beyond expectation since it’s inception in 2010, thanks largely to the efforts of Executive Director Wendy Greco. With nearly 1,700 members and nearly 200 completed projects, the Exchange has become the de facto source for hands-on web analytics education. But we believe we have found a way to do even more with the Exchange in 2012, creating more projects and opportunities for any individual motivated to break into this industry.

We resolve to make ACCELERATE the best small digital measurement conference in the world.

In 2011 we tried something new with the ACCELERATE conference. While mistakes were made, and an awful lot of nice people weren’t able to join us due to demand, we believe we are converging on an innovative conference format that will continue to be 100% free to attend. But we promise to not just stop when we find something that works — we are resolved to push ACCELERATE to be the most engaging, most fun, and most valuable small event in the industry.

How about you? What are you resolved to do in 2012?

I wanted to discuss the latter event.

Since co-founding the event with June Dershewitz in 2005, Web Analytics Wednesday has impacted web analytics practitioners, consultants, and vendors around the globe. Since January 1, 2009, over nearly 12,800 individuals around the globe have attended 524 different events … all free, almost all sponsored, and all designed to create local community value for web analytics professionals.

The best thing about Web Analytics Wednesday, at least in my opinion, is that nobody owns the event series! I get calls all the time from vendors asking about having an event in a city or on a date, and I have to admit I cannot really help them because we are only the brand steward for Web Analytics Wednesday, not the owners, and Web Analytics Wednesday ONLY HAPPENS because of the generosity and commitment of the broader web analytics community.

I think this is amazing.

Dozens of sponsors, hundreds of hosts, and thousands of participants, all coming together to make something happen. The list of hosts is too long to write out, but 99% of them are generous, selfless, and incredibly hard-working individuals who spent their free time organizing these events without any thought of compensation or recognition. When they could be with their families, they are working on behalf of the community. When they could be relaxing, they are organizing.

I think this is humbling.

Web Analytics Wednesday has become a nearly frictionless system, one that anyone, anywhere can help to make happen, and one that has helped people find jobs, find employees, find connections, and find new friends.

I think this is freaking awesome.

Sure, we have guidelines … we ask that hosts use our system for registration, we ask that events not charge money, and we ask that sponsors be treated fairly and appropriately at events, and we ask that when Global Funds are used that hosts take pictures for our Flickr Photo Group so that everyone can share in the fun. We expect Web Analytics Wednesday hosts to be cool, to be honest, and to do what they do for “the community.”

So few people have trouble with this model, the exceptions just become noise in the background.

What’s more, we have big plans for Web Analytics Wednesday in the coming year! Where markets have started to languish, Adam, John, and I have started stepping in and offering willing hosts help to reinvigorate their events. Where smaller events have started to grow, the Global Fund has been providing more and more money for reimbursement, and where we see synergies between our other efforts and those of associations and brands we respect and trust, we have been working to organize larger and more diverse events.

And we are just getting started.

If you’re new to Web Analytics Wednesday, here are the five most important things you should know about getting an event started in your town or community:

1. Web Analytics Wednesday is FREE and OPEN. By design, Web Analytics Wednesday events are open to all practitioners of web analytics and related disciplines and, thanks to the generous support of IQ Workforce and dozens of other companies, always free!
2. Web Analytics Wednesday belongs to everyone. We do not own Web Analytics Wednesday events, we are only shepherds of the brand, working to ensure consistency across a diverse global analytics community. Anyone willing to follow our very simple guidelines can establish a WAW chapter in their town.
3. Web Analytics Wednesday is what you make it. Because everyone owns Web Analytics Wednesday, the event is whatever the local community wants it to be. In some cities, WAW happens over lunch. In others, in nightclubs. Sometimes there are presentations, sometimes not.
4. Web Analytics Wednesday is a state of mind. These events are about local practitioners gathering together, not about a day of the week. Any day can be “Web Analytics Wednesday” … if you’re willing to put in the effort.
5. Web Analytics Wednesday is a profitless system. Again by design, and with specific intent, nobody makes money off of Web Analytics Wednesday. Regardless of who buys the drinks, nobody — including Web Analytics Demystified — makes a single, solitary penny off of these events.

This last point is important — if only because some people simply don’t seem to understand.

Every year generous sponsors like IQ Workforce, Coremetrics/IBM, SiteSpect, and dozens more agree to help pay for Web Analytics Wednesday events around the world. And every year my firm (Web Analytics Demystified) contributes hundreds of hours to ensure that these events go off smoothly. Tens of thousands of dollars are spent to entertain web analysts in great cities like Boston, Chicago, San Francisco, Hong Kong, Sydney, London, and hundreds more. But nobody working on these events — from the mightiest sponsor to the most humble host — gets any compensation in return.

Why do we do this? Why give our money and time to something that won’t make us money? Why did we bother to help create an event series that wouldn’t line out pockets and pay our hourly consulting rate? Simple …

Because we truly care about the web analytics community.

We created Web Analytics Wednesday with June Dershewitz because there was a need back in 2005. We created Web Analytics Wednesday because our community was growing in a strangely fragmented way. We created Web Analytics Wednesday because we could.

I sincerely hope that all of you who have sponsored, hosted, and participated in a Web Analytics Wednesday over the last seven years will continue to do so for years to come. At Web Analytics Demystified, our commitment is to what is right and just when it comes to this event series and, more importantly, to continue to help evolve and improve Web Analytics Wednesday to ensure that analysts everywhere are able to enjoy and appreciate the same community spirit that we enjoy every time we attend one of these events.

I welcome your comments.

Circle Web Analytics Demystified in Google+

We have been sharing lots of information about our recent ACCELERATE conference in San Francisco. Moving forward we hope to share more “quick takes” and multimedia content in Google+ as well as hosting Hangouts with greater and greater regularity to discuss the key topics of the day.

Anyway, I hope if you’re in the U.S. you had a relaxing Thanksgiving and if you’re elsewhere in the world you enjoyed the quiet that happens when the U.S. goes offline.

Amazing.

Thanks to the generosity of Tealeaf, Ensighten, and OpinionLab, plus our great Web Analytics Wednesday sponsors (iJento, ObservePoint, Causata, and Coremetrics/IBM) the party starts Thursday at 6:00 PM and the education and networking starts Friday at 9:00 AM. ACCELERATE is full, but there is still room to join us at Web Analytics Wednesday if you’re in town.

If you’re not able to join us here are a few ways you can participate virtually:

1. We will be encouraging people to share insights via Twitter on both the #ACCELERATE and #measure hashtags. Set your favorite Twitter client to monitor these tags and watch the stream.
2. We created a Twitter list of many of the participants Twitter handles. Follow this list and see what folks at the event are sharing.
3. We will be trying to post content to our new Google+ page for Web Analytics Demystified. Admittedly, we don’t really use Google+ that much but since it allows for longer-form sharing and photos we’re going to try.

Those of you who couldn’t make it to San Francisco should pay attention to these streams later in the day if nothing else: we will be announcing the next ACCELERATE location for 2012 and opening up registration!

If you have any questions about the event now would be a really good time to ask them. Email us directly and we will do our best.

Not that I am surprised — far from it — given that the rate at which senior leadership and traditional business stakeholders have been calling us to help get their analytical house in order. It turns out management doesn’t want to “get over” gaps in data quality; they want reliable numbers they can trust to the best of the company’s ability to inform the broader, business-wide decision making process.

To this end, and thanks to the generosity of our friends at ObservePoint, I am happy to announce the availability of a free white paper Data Quality and  the Digital World. Following up on our 2010 report on page tagging and tag proliferation, this paper drills into the tactical changes that companies can make to work to ensure the best possible data for use across the Enterprise. In addition to providing ten “tips” to help you create trust in your online data, we provide examples from ObservePoint customers including Turner, TrendMicro, and DaveRamsey.com, each of whom have a great story to tell about data auditing and validation.

One surprise when doing the research for this document was that multiple companies cited examples of something we have coined “data leakage.” Data leakage happens when business users, agencies, and other digital stakeholders start deploying technology without approval and, more importantly, without a clear plan to manage access to that technology. Examples are myriad and almost always seem harmless — that is until something goes wrong and the wrong people have access to your web traffic, keyword, or transactional data.

The idea of data leakage is one of the reasons that we have teamed up with BPA Worldwide to create the Web Analytics Demystified GUARDS audit service, and unsurprisingly GUARDS audits include an ObservePoint analysis to help identify possible risks when it comes to consumer data privacy. You can learn more about the GUARDS consumer data privacy audit on our web site.

If you’re being asked about the accuracy and integrity of your web-collected data, if you know you cannot trust the data but aren’t sure what to do about it, or if you suspect your company may potentially be leaking data through tag-based technologies, I would strongly encourage you to download Data Quality and  the Digital World from the ObservePoint site. What’s more, if you need help reseting expectations about data and it’s usage across your business, don’t hesitate to give one of us a call.

Download Data Quality and the Digital World now!

One question in particular surprised me, and the answer I gave forced me to elucidate a point I have been pondering for some time but have never voiced in public. The question came from Elizabeth Smalls (@smallsmeasures, go follow her now) who asked, and I paraphrase, “How can we best explain the differences in the numbers we see between systems?” and ”Is there any chance the web analytics industry will ever have ‘standards’?”

Long-time readers know I have followed the Web Analytics Associations’s efforts to establish standards closely over the years, helping to create awareness about the work and also pushing the Association to “put teeth” behind their definitions and encourage vendors to either move towards the “standard” definitions or, at worst, elucidate where they are compliant and where they differ from the WAA’s work.

Sadly the WAA’s “standards” never really caught on as a set of baseline definitions against which all systems could be compared to help explain some of the differences in the data. As a result practitioners around the globe still struggle when it comes time to explain these differences, especially when moving from one paid vendor to another.  But none of this matters anymore for one simple reason …

Google Analytics has become the de facto standard for web analytics.

Google has become the standard for web analytics by sheer force of might, persistence, and dedication. By every measure, Google Analytics is the world’s most popular and widely deployed web analytics solution. Hell, in our Analysis Exchange efforts we focus exclusively on the use of Google Analytics because A) we know that 99 times out of 100 we will find it already deployed and B) nearly all of our mentors have had enough exposure to Google Analytics to effectively teach it to our students.

What’s more, as Forrester’s Joe Stanhope opined the recently published Forrester Wave for Web Analytics, web analytics as we knew it doesn’t really exist anymore:

“Few web analytics vendors restrict their remit to pure on-site analytics. Most vendor road maps incorporate emerging media such as social and mobile channels, data agnostic integration and analysis features, usability for a broad array of analytics stakeholders, and scalability to handle the rising influx of data and activity.”

Joe says “few” vendors remained focused on on-site analytics, but it would be more precise to say “one” vendor — Google — has maintained interest in how site operators measure their efforts with any level of exclusivity and sincerity. In fact, I don’t think we need to call the industry “web analytics” anymore … it is probably more accurate to say we have “Google Analytics” and “Everything Else.”

Everything else is enterprise marketing platforms. Everything else is integrated online marketing suites. Everything else … is all of the stuff that has been layered on top of solutions we have historically considered “web analytics” as a response to an event that can only be accurately described as the single most important acquisition in our sector, period.

Google Analytics is the de facto standard for web analytics, and this is great news.

Assuming you take care with your Google Analytics implementation, whenever there is a question about the data you will have a fairly consistent[1] view for comparison. Switching from one vendor to another? Use Google Analytics to help explain the differences between the two systems! Worried that your paid vendor implementation is missing data? Compare it to Google Analytics to ensure that you have complete page coverage! Not sure if a vendor’s recent change in their use of cookies impacted their data accuracy? Yes, you guessed it, compare it to Google Analytics!

With Google Analytics you have a totally free standard against which all other data can be reconciled.

Now keep in mind, I am absolutely not saying that all you need is Google Analytics — nothing could be further from the truth. Despite a nice series of updates and the emergence of a paid solution that may be appropriate for some companies, I agree with Stanhope when he says that “Google Analytics Premium still lags enterprise competitors in several areas such as data integration, administration, and data processing …”

But that’s a debate for the lobby bar, not this blog post.

If you’re looking for a set of rules that can be universally applied when it comes to the most basic and fundamental definitions for the measures, metrics, and dimensions that our industry is built upon, you don’t have to look anymore. Google has solved that problem for the rest of us, and we should thank them. Now, thanks to Google, we can focus on some of the real problems facing our industry … which again, is a debate best left to the lobby bar.

What do you think? Are you running Google Analytics on your site? Do you use it when you see anomalies in data collected through other systems? Have you used it to validate a move from one paid vendor to another? Or do you believe that the WAA standards already provide the solution I am ascribing to Google?

As always I welcome your opinions and feedback.

[1] Yes, when Google changed the definition of a “session” that impacted their consistency, but once they corrected the bug they introduced it seems the number of complaints has gone down significantly. What’s more, the change made sense and in general we should be in favor of “improving on standards whenever possible” don’t you think?

Between today and October 1st we will be accepting more registrations for the event on Friday, November 18th in San Francisco. These registrations will still be provisional (e.g., on the “wait list”) but we are committed to having a final list by the first week in October so that folks can make travel plans, etc. If you are interested in joining us, I strongly recommend you go to the ACCELERATE site and register today.

Speaking of the ACCELERATE site, we have added information about many of the fine folks who will be presenting “Ten Tips in Twenty Minutes.” We are extremely honored to have great speakers including Bill Macaitis, VP of Online Marketing at Salesforce.com, Michael Gulmann, VP of Global Site Conversion at Expedia, and a half-dozen other brilliant analysts, practitioners, and vendors representing great companies like Sony Entertainment, AutoDesk, Symantec, and many more.

What’s more, we are honored to have ESPN’s Ben Gaines, formerly of Omniture/Adobe fame and the creator of the @OmnitureCare twitter account. Ben will be sharing tips on managing expectations in vendor relationships and I have to say we’re pretty excited to be hosting Ben’s first “non-vendor” appearance in the web analytics world.

We have also put up a registration for the big Web Analytics Wednesday event we will be holding on Thursday, November 17th, generously sponsored by Causata, Coremetrics/IBM, iJento, and ObservePoint. The location is still TBD but is looking like Roe in downtown San Francisco.

So, if you’re interested in joining us at ACCELERATE, your action items today are:

1. Register on the expanded wait list at the ACCELERATE web site
2. Register for the Web Analytics Wednesday event
3. Tweet something like “I want to attend #ACCELERATE 2011! http://j.mp/accelerate2011 #measure”

(Okay, the last action item is more of a wish-list thing for us … ;-)