Cookie consent law is breathtakingly stupid

For years I've written about why the public shouldn't be afraid of cookies except for the calories in the ones people eat. Despite my efforts, fear has continued to grow in part spurred on my anti-virus software companies that look for tracking cookies.

What most people don't get is that effective ecommerce web sites need cookies to operate. Web analytics software need cookies to create more accurate statistics of user behavior to conintually improve the sites usability and improve marketing campaigns to better convey message to their target audience.

So I'm shocked, but not surprised that the EU is passing a law that will effectively ban the use of cookies on EU based web sites without specific user permissions.

For all the details on this new law and all the stupid impacts please read http://www.techradar.com/news/internet/cookie-consent-law-is-breathtakingly-stupid-648740 from TechRadar.com

Tracking Phone Calls in WebTrends

About 8 weeks ago I was contacted by Mongoose Metrics.

The purpose of this contact was two fold. First they wanted to demonstrate their product. Mongoose Metrics is an web/marketing analytics tool for tracking and attributing on-line phone calls back to the referring on-line marketing campaign.

The product works simply: by adding some java script to you page and a bit tagging. The result is that everyone who comes to your site sees a different toll-free number. This number is recorded in a cookie along with information about the referrer. If they came directly to your site, the visitor sees the default number.

The cool thing happens when a web site visitor decides to call because they need more information or to place the order over the telephone. The software then very cleanly capatures all the referrer information and displays it to you in a easy to read report format. With a bit of advance set-up you can even break it down by different marketing programs.

Now the exciting part and the second reason Mongoose contacted me. They wanted to see if it was possible to integrate their data automatically into WebTrends. After a bit of trial and error, I developed the framework for the integration and Mongoose quickly developed the code on their end to make it possible.

So what does it mean to the average WebTrends web analytics team. With a bit of effort and creation of some WebTrends Custom Reports, you can now know which campaigns (and any variable within your campaigns translation file) drove people to call in. This conversion point is no longer a mystery.

During our tests we were able to successfully monitor calls generated by a Twitter post (tweat), a link in a Facebook status, traffic from organic and paid search including which keyword phrases generated the calls.

The method was successfully tested with both WebTrends OnDemand and an locally installed version of WebTrends (must be using the SDC feature). Beyond passing a conversion point, the configuration also allows for you to set a dollar value to be assigned to each call. While this value is fix in your configuration right now, plans are being made to develop a way to make the value of call arbitrary and in control of the person who took the call. This feature is still under development and no time line has been provided. However, even with assigning an average call value, better quality ROI calculations can be made to better optimize your campaigns.

Below are some sample reports from WebTrends

Paths to and from the call



Orders By Campaign ID (in this case the order is a phone call)



We are still conducting tests, but I expect this feature to be available to the general public before the end of year. If you'd like more information please let me know and I'll be glad to make the appropriate introductions.

Search Engine Strategies - Toronto

For the past two days, I was totally engrossed in Search Engine Strategies (SES) Toronto show. My hat goes off to this years conference organizers at Incisive truly came through and took all the negative criticism from the past couple of year and turned it around.

Change from the Toronto conference centre to the Sheraton Centre was by far the biggest improvement. No longer were attendees and speaker subjected to the dungeon like bottom floor of the convention centre, but instead were treated to a much warmer environment even if it was all virtually on the bottom floor as well. Perhaps it was just the lighting and the cushy carpeted floors, but it just worked better and there were not (or at least I couldn't find them) black holes where you cellphone wouldn't work.

As usual, the quality of speakers was fantastic as usual and Andrew Goodman who chaired this event did an excellent job developing the session topics. Grant many of the session were very basic, but there were a few sessions and frequently at least one panelist who took it to the next level.

One change I did notice this year was the background of the attendees. In past year there were many do it yourself business types at the event trying to figure out how to do SEO and PPC on their own. This time around there was the usual independent SEO consultants and some agency types, but many more people who were from medium to larger business who are the ones being tasked with implement SEO or paid search campaigns.

But no conference takes place with out a few criticisms. The biggest one I heard and agreed with was the location of one of the 3 session rooms. It was far way (about a 5 minute walk) from the may area. Attendees and/or speakers not paying attention to which room they needed to go to were frequently seen rushing to these rooms or getting there late. The distance from the main conference area to the speakers room had the same problem. While this was a inconvenience for most speakers, on the positive side this forced many of the speakers who usually disappear to the speakers room to remain in the conference area and opened up the lines of communication with all the attendees.

There are numerous blog posts and tweets on the session specifics so I would take up any more of your time, just simply search on SES Toronto for the blog post or #sesto in Twitter for more information

WebTrends Release New Tag Builder

WebTrends announced today the release of a second generation tag builder. The tag builder is used for generating customized SDC (Smart Data Collector) java scripts to be added to web pages for java script based web analytics for both WebTrends OnDemand and installed version of WebTrends.

Details of the changes can be found at http://blog.webtrends.com/2009/02/24/new-verison-of-tag-builder-available/

Of note, you no longer have to tag Google Adword ads as paid search as WebTrends can now use the Google generated campaign ID assume you've enable "Autotagging" enabled for your Google Adwords campaign.

I'll be testing the new tag builder within the next few days and will post any problems if I find them.

Shorten URL's - TinyURL

With the growing acceptance of Twitter into main stream use, the use of services to shorten lengthy URLs is growing. There are many of these free services out there on the web. Popular ones include:

• tinyurl
• bit.ly
• hex.io
• zi.ma
• is.gd
• and many more

The question becomes how do these services affect your web analytic reports? So let's start with the basics.

First off, if someone is using a twitter application (for example Tweetdeck) any one clicking on a full and proper link it would appear as direct traffic. The only way to properly identify this users is to use your web analytics campaign tracking feature.

If someone were to click on a shorten URL on a web page, how the referrer is handled would vary by the both the shortening service (most service do however work the same way) and your web analytics software.

For example using tinyurl and generating a link to my company web site www.knechtology.com the shorten URL would appear as: http://tinyurl.com/dfjood and would generate the following sequence of hits.

GET 301 Redirect to http://www.knechtology.com/ http://tinyurl.com/dfjood
GET 200 text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1 http://www.knechtology.com/

The first hit might appear in tinyurl's web log files or possibly not depending on how they handle the 301 redirect. Regardless, there is nothing recorded in my web site's log files until the second hit.

Now the big question is: will this hit appear with the referrer of tinyurl.com or not. For that you need to check your log files. In my experience at best this will appear as a referrer from the shortening service. That's why if I'm posting a link in Twitter back to my web site, I alway like to add a campaign id to the URL.

I personally don't care which Tweet generated the traffic so here at K'nechtology have set up a standard one. If you want to distinguish your Tweets, you'll need to generate unique campaign IDs for each post.

WebTrends Update

WebTrends has released an update for those of us who have the software version. This update includes an update of the latest search engine list including Twitter and an update of the browser list.

It is simple to download and fast to upgrade.

To download or for more information go to:

http://www.webtrends.com/support/browser-and-keywords-updater.aspx

SMX Analytics

As I mentioned before starting on March 31, 2009 SMX will be holding its first SMX Analytics conference in Toronto Canada. At this time, I'm thrilled to announce that I'll be speaking at this event on March 31 during the "Analyzing & Converting Organic Search Traffic" session.

This promises to be a great event and remember that eMetrics will be on at the same time in Toronto as well. Great chance to take in two different web analytic conferences.

Tracking Clicks on Off-site Links - Made Easy with WebTrends SDC

One of the biggest questions many of us in web analytics have faced over the years was tracking visitors ow who click on which links that take users to 3rd party websites (external links). This is critical if you run banner ads, sell links, have partner sites etc.

Over the years a number of solutions have been developed. Some of these worked reasonably well and have included using third part tracking tools or creating redirection page or script. In any option it always required a middle layer that user would be directed to first and then redirect them to the external site. This solution, while it work, created a point of failure and potentially a bad user experience.

With the introduction java script tracking web analytics (WebTrends SDC, Google Analytics, Omiture etc.) it became possible tag the HTML code (specifically the "a href" tag) with an on-click or on-mouse down function that execute the tracking java script file and pass a series of variables to the data collection server. While this method works, it requires additional web site programming which generally required IT resources and testing.

WebTrends has come up with a way with their new SDC java script (relased earlier this year) to simplify this whole process. When building your SDC java script using the WebTrends Tag Builder simply select "Off-Site Links" as an option under the "Event Tracking" tab and generate your SDC script.

Once the script is uploaded, all works perfectly and clicks to off-site sites will appear in the top pages report with the title extension of "Offsite:URL".

At last something made simple. And please remember, if you need help with your WebTrends configuration please feel free to contact my company as that is one of our specialty.

Self Referrer

Just got asked an interesting web analytics question. The client was reviewing the "Referring Domain" report in WebTrends and noticed a lot of direct traffic and that the site itself is listed as a referrer. They wanted to know why.

This is a question that I'm frequently asked by users of various web analytic products, and so I thought I'd post my response for others.


Direct traffic (as reported by WebTrends) comes from the following sources

1. People entering the web site URL directly
2. People having added the web site directly to their bookmarks and then clicking on the bookmarked site
3. People clicking on a link in an email
4. Other possible sources for links that are not part of a web site
5. People who choose to hide the referring web site information (a setting now available in some browsers)

In the report where the website is listed as its own referrer is a bit harder to explain, but here is my explanation:

Every page has a referrer, so when someone browses from one page to another page within the site, the site is in itself a referrer.

Normally, these should not appear in a referrer report (many analytics products strip this data out), but WebTrends does show this data under certain circumstances. What a site self referring traffic generally means is that someone was on the site who's visit session had time out (stayed on a page more than 30 minutes) and then clicked on a new page. So that a new visits was initiated and the visits referrer is now the site itself. There are a couple of other possible causes of this, but this is the easiest one to explain and understand.

Canadian Marketing Association Roundtable

Next week (Thursday October 16) I'll be one of 3 speakers at this months CMA's Roundtable here in Toronto. The topic is Demystifying Web Analytics. I'll be giving the first talk and will be covering the fundamentals of web analytics.

This should be a great event and price is right for those of you in the Toronto area. It's $80 for member and $100 for non-members.

For more information see the RoundTables web page at:
http://www.the-cma.org/?WCE=C=47%7CK=228645

Google Chrome Reporting in WebTrends

In case you missed the big news a couple of weeks back Google released its browser called "Chrome". New browsers are nothing new, but because its from Google the speed at which users are trying it is higher than if it came from some unknown company. Now if you're using WebTrends On-Demand or Google Analytics, you don't have to worry about it showing up in your web analytics report of user clients.

However, if you are using a locally installed web analytics product (like WebTrends) then you need to tweak your software to start reporting on it. For WebTrends users, I've found some great instructions on just how to do this from WebTrends. These instructions can be found at: http://www.webtrendsoutsider.com/2008/adding-the-chrome-browser-to-your-reports/
For other web analytic products check with your manufacture and please post links to any guides as comments to this post.

WebTrends 8.5

WebTrends 8.5 was just released today (June 30th).

I'm in the process of downloading it and will report back my findings and recommendations about upgrading shortly.

Here's hoping issues with Geotrends have been resolved and that the new database for the backend is more stable and flexible than the previous MySQL.

If you're feeling adventurous you can download and try it for yourself at
ftp://ftp.webtrends.com/WRC/85/

Here are some of the new features as reported by WebTrends:
Analytics Reports and report Administration
New calculated measures provide support for user-configured formulas. Configure calculated measures in custom reports during configuration, or create them at report time to provide new insights in real time. Report users can rearrange existing columns or add new ones on the fly.

Analytics Reports
New Web 2.0-focused reports provide enhanced out-of-the-box tracking for Rich Internet Applications (RIA), RSS feeds, streaming media, and customer-generated media.

WebTrends Administration and WebTrends Accounts
New user roles provide consistent, streamlined user rights assignments and custom groupings when creating or modifying users in WebTrends On Demand or Software. Use preconfigured roles included with your implementation, or create roles fine-tuned to your organizational needs in WebTrends Administration.
WebTrends Analytics On Demand administrators now assign user roles, not rights, in WebTrends On Demand Accounts.

Other points to note:
The user interface no longer requires Java
Analytics Reports - Analytics Reports Calendar now defaults to monthly rather than daily.

Stay tuned for my review. I should be finished putting through its paces by the end of the week.

Web Analytics & Mobile Devices

Here is a link to an interesting article about the issues of measuring traffic from mobile devices and the short comings of the traditional web analytics products http://searchenginewatch.com/showPage.html?page=3629590

Of course, this article can't capture everything, but it missed one big point and the one I've been standing up for years on. While the article talks about the short comings of using java script based tracking (like Google Analtyics, Web Trends SDC etc.), it didn't talk about my standard recommended approach.

This approach means setting the user cookie at the server and not on the web page and recording this in the log file. Most mobile devises (to my limited knowledge) do accept first party cookies even if they won't execute most java scripts. So with the cookie controlled by the server and not the web page, you can track unique visits.

What I found most interesting from this article was the percentage of people who do some web browsing from their mobile devices in the use (19%). Here in Canada I don't know of many who except in an emergency would do any browsing (unless their phone supports WiFi). Of course the cost of data plans here is ridiculous hight when compared to the USA.

Regardless if this percentage is high or low, the reality is people are starting to surf from their mobile phones and we better be prepared to measure and analyze this traffic. Anyone who's attended one of my web analytics or WebTrends training classes lately knows I do reference this issue with mobile browsing and its growing impact on the world of web analytics.

WebTrends 8.1a - Reissued

During a routine call to WebTrends technical support a couple of weeks ago, I was asked an interesting questions by them. The question was "Which download of WebTrends 8.1a was I using?".

This question took me a second to digest. I dug a little deeper to only discover that some time in the middle of January of this year, they posted a revised version of WebTrends 8.1 on their FTP site. This posting had no fanfare and no announcement. I guess they just assumed that anyone installing 8.1a would simply download the newer version automatically. They didn't think about people like myself and my firm to help companies install their product. We keep the latest version of WebTrends on our USB keys so our clients don't have to download them.

Not being told there was a revision is a little disheartening.

However that being said, I've personally did one complete install of WebTrends 8.1a from stratch and was by far the smoothest install of 8.1a I had to date. In fact, there were any problems what so ever. Of course, this client had a properly sized server with ample RAM and hard drive space.

I just completed a reinstall of 8.1a on my company's test WebTrends sever and all went smooth. We're going to be doing a bit more testing, but it is starting to look like the upgrade to WebTrends 8.1 might finally be good enough to recommended it clients. Let me test it a bit further before you take that big jump.

However, if you're planning on simply installing it from scratch on a new server without porting all your existing data, I'm very happy to now recommended it. As always, read the installation guide first and make sure you have a minimum of 3 gigs of RAM or 4 gigs of RAM per processor if you're planning on using the WebTrends GeoTrends module.

As always, if you can afford it, I recommend having a firm like my company (K'nechtology) or WebTrends itself come out and help you install and configure the product plus get your WebTrends Administrators some training. WebTrends is not a simple product to manage and a lot more difficult to install correctly than an out of the box product like MS Office or Adobe Photoshop.

SEM & Web Analytics

Here's an interesting article on the getting the big picture of Search Engine Marketing lined up correctly with web analytics. Basically it boils down to the problem of different camps and different responsibilities and objectives.

If you have a few minutes give it a read at http://semphonic.blogs.com/semangel/2007/11/search-engine-m.html

WebTrends 8.1a - Issues and Solutions

An interesting thing occurred today, I received a call from one of WebTrends senior technical support staff. Turns out he was reading my blog posts about all recent issues with version 8.1. This is also one of the reason I like WebTrends. This was not a call to calm me down, but a proactive call and investigation into the cause of my problems and if I managed to get them resolved. I've always said that WebTrends has some of the best Techincal Support staff in the software business (both knowledgeable and high quality service)

We chatted for about 15 minutes and discussed issues and the reasons why. Here are a couple of things that came out of it.

1. My problem about the status message not updating for over 30 minutes is noted and should be addressed in a future release;
2. The reason why it takes so long upgrade compared to any previous version - turns out that WebTrends makes a temporary backup of the existing database, then deletes everything before performing a complete new install afterwards it restores the data.

This is a high risk move which is why WebTrends stresses the need to properly back up your WebTrends before any upgrade. I'll be posting a guide to the upgrade that I've developed based on some other conversations with tech support to ensure it goes smoothly.

3. Spent 3 days working with version 8.1a - while it is taking a while to get use to the new interface and there are still some technical issues, there are some new features that do make the upgrade worthwhile. Just make sure you plan for the upgrade properly (leave lots of time).

Here are a few of my favorites new features

1. Scheduled Reports - you can now specify a default SMTP server and from Address - no need to enter for each scheduled report.
2. Ability to FTP scheduled reports to a repository
3. Use of date macros in scheduled report naming convention (no more overwriting previously saved reports)
4. Ability to right click on a graphic a copy and pasted to other applications

Here are a few things I really don't like

1. Can't open profile reports in a new window or tag - so have keep closing report to view the admin module instead of toggling between them;
2. Export to Excel Smart Reports is no longer listed as an export type (solution - just choose "Export to Database");
3. Still no date macros available for scheduled custom compare reports

I'll expand on the above items in another post. The good news is the software is stable and performs as promised.

WebTrends Releases 8.1a

As previously posted, the new version of WebTrends 8.1 was a bit buggy. So 4 weeks later, WebTrends has now released the first round of patches with version 8.1a.

I'm in the process of upgrading my test server and the upgrade is slow. Just like during the original upgrade, it looks like the upgrade is hanging giving a message for more then 30 minutes "Time remaing: 13 seconds". I learned my lesson last time and did kill the process.

The result, after 30 minutes, I was notified that the upgrade was successful and to reboot the server.

I also did a brand new clean install today on a production server at a client. It went smooth until I went back to modify the configuration to change the UI port from the default of 7099 to port 80. After 30 minutes, WebTrends was still displaying the message "Shutting Down WTUI". It was a little after 5:00 pm, so I left it and am keeping my fingers crossed that it will be resolved by tomorrow morning.

So until I see the impact from tonights upgrade, I still can't recommend the WebTrends upgrade. However if your installing from scratch, go for it and download the latest version WebTrends 8.1a at ftp://ftp.webtrends.com/WRC/81a/wt-windows.exe

WebTrends 8.1 Update

Over the weekend WebTrends released version 8.1 to all Ondemand customers. It appears to be working fine.

I've also installed the stand-alone version on my test server and despite some problems getting the upgrade to work, it appears to be working. However, I also have a test SDC installation on that server and that has created a conflict.

I think I know where the problem lies, but I just haven't had time to fix it. I hope to have that resolved shortly. Once I have that out of the way, I can better comment on version 8.1. I must admit, I do like the new interface.

A couple of complaints on the new version and the install. First it requires .net Framework version 2.0. I had to go out and look for it on microsoft.com and install it. It should have come bundled with the install.

Secondly, since the new version doesn't require Apache or Tomcat it should have prompted me to delete these two applications. Instead it simply leaves them on the server and deactivated the Apache Virtual host. Not a very clean upgrade.

Lastly, my test server has less then 10 profiles and all are very small. Yet it took several hours for the upgrade. This seems excessive and I'm not looking forward to upgrading my various clients who have a 100 plus profiles.

WebTrends 8.1

Want to thank Wolf who gave me the heads-up that WebTrends 8.1 in now available for download.

I'm on the road this week and next week running WebTrends training classes, so I don't know when I'll get the chance to install and evaluate this download. Should be lots of fun

If you want to be the first on the block with WebTrends 8.1 go ftp://ftp.webtrends.com/WRC/81/

For the OnDemand users, WebTrends is promising the upgrade this coming weekened (Auguat 18 & 19th).

Should be a fun time for all.

WebBuilder 2007 Schedule Annouced

As mentioned in an earlier post, I'll be speaking at this years WebBuilder 2.0 conference in Las Vegas (December 3-5, 2007). The good news is they've finally launched the conference web site at www.ftponline.com/conferences/webbuilder/2007.

The bad news is I've been given a tough time slot. I'll be speaking on Tuesday December 4 at 5:15 pm. Once again my session is entitled "Designing with Web Analytics In Mind".

For details on my session and the other sessions along with information about the conference workshops, be sure to visit their web site.

WebBuider 2007 Here I Come

I've just been confirmed as a speaker at this years WebBuilder conference in Las Vegas. This years conference will run from December 3 to December 5. I'm thrilled to be speaking at this years conference as usual. This speaking engagement will ensure my attendance at one of the industries most interesting web conferences anywhere plus it keeps alive my continuous attendance at WebBuilder conferences since the inaugural event back in 97.

WebBuilder was originally organized by CNet and eventually sold to FTP Publications who just after last year's WebBuilder conference was purchased by 1105 Media.

What makes WebBuilder stand out as a conference for web builders is it is the only conference to target the entire web development team. This includes everyone from programmers to project managers to the entire marketing team. There are conference tracks there for everyone and some that try to bring the different teams together. My topic this year is exactly that. Entitled "Designing with Web Analytics in Mind", will address the needs of the marketing team for measuring success and build a bridge with the web developers to ensure that the web site is designed and code in such a way to support the web analytic needs of the marketing and management teams.

More on my conference address at a later date. Once the conference web site is up and running, I'll be sure to post a link to it. For now, if you want to check out last years conference you can view the 2006 WebBuilder 2.0 web site instead and start planning to attend this unique annual conference.

Monitoring Search Engine Traffic

One of the advantages of speaking at conferences is the chance to meet and socialize with other conference speakers. Recently at SES Toronto, I had the opportunity to go out for dinner with some 40 plus of these people.

During the dinner I had the chance to chat with someone from Google who actually works on the algorithm and I was able to get some very detailed information o the algorithm that almost contradicted what he had he said during his conference address. To be more specific, I got him to clarify his statement about coding valid HTML and its impact on SEO efforts, more on that another day.

The score of the evening was a chat with Richard Zwicky of Enquisite (www.enquisite.com). During our chat, he mentioned a beta product that his company had launched that allows any web site to get extremely detailed search engine traffic information that typically exceeds anything from all the web analytic products on the marketing (including WebTrends, Site Catalyst, etc.).

So we swapped business cards, and the next day I was given a personal demo of the Enquisite tool. I was impressed and immediately following the conference I registered for the beta. Ever since my account was activated, I've been enjoying rich detailed information on how people are finding my web site.

Features include:

• Splitting paid from organic traffic;
• Exact search phrases;
• Data drilldown by country, region, city, search engine, paid vs. organic, search term or any combination of these elements;
• Frequency of searches;
• Which page of search results they had clicked on;

This tool is a must have for anyone doing search engine optimization or search engine marketing. If you're using Google Analytics or any other analytics tool that doesn't easily split paid from organic traffic, the value is even higher. The best news it's free. All you need to do is go to the Enquisite site (www.enquisite.com), register and typically within 24 hours your account will be activated and you'll be given a java script to add to the bottom of all your web pages. It's that simple.

Once the script is activated, you just need to do a tiny bit of configuration to define how you identified paid traffic and away you go. You can now easily and accurately extract valuable information from all your search traffic. With this information on hand you can use it to further enhance you SEO efforts or paid search campaigns.

SES Presentation - Follow-up

Just a quick note to all those who attended my presentation at the Search Engine Strategies conference here in Toronto on June 12.

I was thrilled with all the positive feedback you gave me after the presentation as I wandered the vendor area and hallways of the Toronto Convention Centre.

Many of you asked me for the name of the software that dynamically sets different phone numbers on your web site. The company is voicestar.com.

As I mentioned during the Q&A of the session, I've only seen the demo of this software and am not currently using it. From the demo it looks great. So if you give it a try let me know how it works out.

Which Analytic Tool Are They Using?

Ever wonder which of the many web analytics tool a specific web site is using? Maybe not, but rest assured that if you start getting more and more into web analytics the question will come up from one of your clients or even yourself.

To help answer this question, the folks at webanalyticsdemystified.com have made a free tool available called "Simple Vendor Discovery Tool". This tool can help determine which java script based web analytics tool a specific site is using. Unfortunately, and for obvious reasons, if a site is analyzing traditional log files, it won't be able to help.

So have some fun and check it out at http://www.webanalyticsdemystified.com/vendor_discovery_tool.asp

Search Engine Strategies - Toronto

For the third year in a row, I'll be speaking at Search Engine Strategies Toronto. While the search engine conference will run for two days (June 12-13), I will be speaking in the morning of June 12.

Look for me at the session entitled "Keyword Research: Purpose, Tools, and Tactics".

I'll be giving this topic a bit of twist by not talking usual SEO stuff, but about how to harvest data from your own log files. In essence using web analytics in support of search engine optimization and search engine marketing. Unfortunately, I'll only have 15 minutes to speak and I could easily devote several hours to this topic.

So if you're going to be in the Toronto area in June, keep this conference in mind. It is the only one of its kind to take place in Canada. If past experience is anything, it is well worth the cost of admission.

For more information visit the SES conference web site.

WebTrends 8.0d Download Now Available

WebTrends as of last Friday released 8.0d. This version contains the batch for daylight savings time plus a few other minor bug fixes.

I'm in the process of downloading it and as usual either WebTrends is swamped with downloads (which I doubt) or they are once again throttling the download speed. I'm on a high speed connection and barely getting dial-up download speeds.

Oh well,

Here is the link for all of you: ftp://ftp.webtrends.com/WRC/80d/wt-windows.exe

WebTrends & Day Light Savings Time

Great article from WebTrends on what you need to do before this weekends change to Day Light Savings time here in North America.

Basically you don't need to do anything if you're running your profiles with the default settings. However, if you are using the custom time zone settings, you need to apply a patch.

The article references WebTrends 8.0d, but a check of their download site does not show a version 8.0d being available. My guess is that the patch is the equivalent, unfortunately the article is a bit vague on this.

What's interesting is that the patch became available on March 2, barely a week before needed. Yet given the formal policies in most organizations about applying patches to production servers, I expect many organizations won't have the patch in place on time.

I also find it surprising that WebTrends hasn't issued a notice of the patch and instead has relied on a message being displayed when you log into your WebTrends. Since many people ignore these WebTrends marketing messages I'm sure many organizations didn't even get the message that there is a patch available.

New Marketing Guy at WebTrends

In case you haven't heard, WebTrends has appointed Tim Kopp as its new CMO (Chief Marketing Officer). Kopp is responsible for all the company's marketing and branding.

Kopp joins WebTrends with over 10 years of marketing experience including his most recent efforts at Coke where he has served as VP-global interactive marketing for just under the past two years. According to one article Kopps is best known for convincing Coke to embrace the Mentos-Diet Coke geyser video phenomenon by sponsoring video contests at EepyBird.com.

Makes you think what he'll have up his sleeve to help promote WebTrends.

WebTrends 8.0c Upgrade Now Available

WebTrends quietly released a version 8.0c upgrade on December 15th. Version 8.0c in now available for downloading from WebTrends' FTP server. It's been a few days since the upgrade was made available on the WebTrends FTP site (ftp.webtrends.com), but still no alert in my installation or others that I monitor. I'm sure one will eventually show up.

Don't remember a version 8.0b, don't worry about it. WebTrends only released version 8.0b for their on-demand service. Version 8.0c doesn't seem to fix much, even in their documentation there is no reference to IE7, I've yet to confirm if the IE 7 fix is included, but my preliminary test show all is OK. Still I don't know what would have happened if I hadn't done the IE7 WebTrends patches first.


I was hoping for more fixes and improvements, but for now all seems well. A list of the fixes is available at product.webtrends.com/wrc/8/issuesresolved/IssuesResolvedInWebTrends80.pdf
And the upgrade is available for downloading at
ftp.webtrends.com/WRC/80c/

Ajax and Web Analytics Problem or Opportunity?

This morning, I sat through the most imformative Keynote I think I've ever sat through. Scott Dietzen the President and CTO of Zimbra, kicked off Web Builder 2.0 with some great insight into the potential of using AJAX to build Web 2.0.

I'm not going to summarize his talk, but he really showed the potential in a way everyone from marketing people to hard core java developers could undertand.

I finally got to see some of the issues that the web analytics world is going to face when it comes analyzing this new generation of web sites. I know products like WebTrends claim to have a solution, and yes it should work. However, during the presentation, I may have discovered some other alternatives for more accurate reporting.

I talked breifly with Scott and hope to follow-up on it over the next few weeks. Perhaps between the two of us, we'll come up with a workable and easy to implement solution that will work across all web analytic tools.

Teaching the World about Web Analytics

Last week I had the privilege to deliver a 20 minute presentation on how to improve the accuracy of web analytics reporting to AIMS (Association of Internet Marketing & Sales) in Toronto. The presentation went extremely well as I was flanked on both sides by cases studies.

One of the cases studies addressed improving Search Engine Marketing efforts with analytics and the other was improving overall web site efficiencies with it. The irony was both of these presentations dealt with the travel industry.

Today in a few hours I'll be addressing the international crowd at WebBuilder 2.0 in Las Vegas. The subject is Improving ROI with Web Analytics. A very similar presentation to last week's, but this time it's just me.

So far the best part to the trip is my hotel room. While my flight here was uneventful (just long with a 2 hour layover in Denver), getting out of the Las Vegas airport was another story. I had to wait 30 minutes for my suitcase. Now I'm not a person who normally checks a bag for short trips, but with the layover I thought it would be the wise thing to do. Well never again. Now the worst part, after checking into Caesars Palace at the airport checking, I decided to take their airport shuttle ($7 vs. a $20 cab ride). What a big mistake, after rushing the length of the terminal to catch the next shuttle, I was told it was full and I'd have to wait for the next one. Well the next one didn't arrive for another 30 minutes. So basically it took 2 hours from touch town of my flight to the hotel.



The bad news continues, the room they gave me, didn't have a view. OK not a big deal, but when I looked out the window, I was right next to a roof top heating and cooling system making lots of noise. Fortunately, I complained and I'm not one to complain, but with a big presentation to do the next morning I thought I better. Well my hats off to Caesars Palace. Despite being sold out, they found me a better room. They gave a much superior room (about 3 times in size) as a no charge upgrade and it even has a reasonable view (35 floor vs. 4 floor).

Why am I telling you this? Simple, it is all analytics. Telling people it took you 2 hours to get to a hotel from an airport doesn't tell anything. Was that a good thing or a bad thing? Once I break down the steps into a scenario we get to see where problems are in the process. If I hadn't prepaid for the shuttle, and had known I'd have to wait 30 minutes, I would have abandoned this scenario and the ROI for Caesars selling shuttle passes would have gone down.

While Caesars Palace gave me a less then desirable room at the airport checkin, they demonstrated a desire to fix the problem at some cost to themselves, they improved my experience got a nice writeup in this blog, made me feel good about being here which in turn may mean I'll spend a little more at least tell people about it. Hence a soft conversion that is hard to put into dollar values, but still a positive factor in the ROI equation.

All these topics are being covered in today's presentation, the only difference I'll be talking it about from a web site perspective and there really isn't a difference. There is always a customer at the other end.