Guest Speaker - Curtis Morley

Yesterday, my web analytics class was lucky enough to have Curtis Morley come speak to us. He taught us more about things we can do with Google web analytics especially in conjunction with flash pages. Below I've included what I found to be the highlights of his presentation.

In web analytics, there is a lot of data, so you need to know where to look. More specifically, you need to know what path is important to the information you want

On the blog AboutNiceo under the "Analytics Reporting Suite bets for AIR 1.0 available" there is a link to download, or you can go directly to the page of download through this link. I have yet to experiment with it, but it seems exciting. The site describes it as "The Google Analytics Reporting suite is an Adobe AIR application that brings Google Analytics to the desktop. It uses it’s own custom API to interact with Google and nearly implements all features of Analytics. See the feature list for more info." One of the coolest features I've seen is that you can actually select a range of dates to view.

If you want to track specific actions using Google analytics, you can create a new profile by following these steps:

• Log in to Google Analytics
• Select Account Settings (top left)
• Select the + button or "Add Website Profile"
• Make sure the "Add profile for existing domain" radio button is selected
• Give it a profile name and select finish
• Select edit for that profile
• Select Add Filter
• Add your filter
• Example: select the "include only traffic to a sub directory" then type in the sub directory
• Finish

By applying this filter to your profile, that profile will include only the data that you have told it to. When adding a filter, make sure to double and triple check the spelling. A missed or added character will impede your ability to receive data.

With FLASH
Google’s analytics through flash tells you to use a string called geturl. It makes it so javascript is sent across constantly (like constant mouse over’s).

The following piece of code contains how it is actually sent (an example used in class):
Private function sendAnalytics (trackURL)
{
GAShared.date.today = theDate.getDate();
GAShared.data.topFive = this.topFive;
GAShared.flush();
ExternalInterface.call("pageTracker._trackPageview", "/[insert your subdirectory name]/" + trackURL);
}

The last line of code is what is really important…that line is what actually sends the data. Make sure to import the external interface class at the top of your code. Then you’d say to send the analytics whenever something happens (color to bw, or mouseovered) by calling sendAnalytics and passing in the trackURL.

It was great to have Curtis come speak to us. I haven't had previous experience coding in flex or flash, but I still feel like I learned a lot about how to setup the web analytics on pages coded in flash. If you are interested in learning more about him or voting on his logo go to curtismorley.com.

Omniture Summit - Wed morning

I was able to attend the Wednesday morning session of the Omniture Summit and it was great to hear about what direction web analytics and specifically Omniture is going. I'll just go through and highlight what each speaker talked about:

Josh James, Peter Kim, Ted Cannis
(sorry...i didn't write when each speaker came in for the first 3) Omniture wants to have the Omniture Summit conference so that they are able to get feedback from their customers so they can improve. Some of their goals include automating analytics and tying together the online and offline world, training users to analyze data. Omniture has strengthened many relationships with partners including Bai du (bringing metric-based online marketing to the largest Internet economy), Adobe and Accenture.

Currently, websites overall are average. They are not using best practices. Some examples of sites that are using best practices include Adidas and Apple (for navigation) and Ford virtual show room (e-commerce). The best in class web 2.0 website is Nike + [I found this very cool because I actually use this. I've had my nike ipod nano running kit for the last year and it is great to be able to challenge other all around the world, track my runs and see what routes people use in any given area]. The way websites are moving is to making a custom experience for each user.

Online marketing is evolving to a place where you are able to store and manage in real-time. There are 3 basic components for doing so: (1) Reporting and analytics: site catalyst, discover, genesis, (2) Campaign Management: search center, (3) Conversion: Test & Target.

Brett Error
Discussed how Omniture products (site catalyst, discover, genesis, search center, test & target) can be used. I thought that the discussion on search center was very interesting. Assuming I understood correctly, it is able to optimize your spending by allowing you to say how much you want to spend on keywords and it will provide you with suggestions of what keywords to pay more/less for.

Matt Belkin
Went over improvements made in the recent upgrade to Site Catalyst including consolidated menus, new charts (bubble chart), 9 new video report (combined into 1 server call that will track start, stop etc.), report distribution, and presentable/tailored data.

Chris Knoch
Improved integration between site catalyst and search center, actionable reports (add keywords to account from one location), and the portfolio management system (forecasting).

Mikel Chertuidi
I found this speaker's topic interesting also. He talked about test & target. For example, he asked which ad got the most people to register for the summit. He showed the percentages against the baseline, defining baseline as "a nice way of saying it lost." The winning banner add was the Flight of the Conchords. The test & target feature is a great way to do some guess and checking both for what ads to use and where to place them.

It was a great experience to be able to attend this portion of the summit. I was able to meet a couple people there including someone from PayPal and another from CNN. It really was a gather of people all over that are interested in improving online marketing.