Net-times: My Perspective

Before I get to the importance of web analytics today and in the future, first let me tell you a little story about an 800 lb gorilla.

Google recently announced that it was going to provide a browser plugin that allowed anyone to opt out of being tracked by their metrics reporting product, Google Analytics.  From a normal user’s perspective, it sounds great that they are providing this type of flexibility.  However, Google has been pushing this (free) web reporting product for years as an enterprise-level solution for tracking web visitor activity.  And now, after gaining significant market share, they tell their customers people will have the option of easily opting out.  While adoption rates are projected to be low, this is not a friendly gesture to users of Google Analytics.

This move by Google has generated several discussions on the importance of web analytics in the world of web KPI reporting.  I have heard people say lately that “eyeballs” and “pageviews” are becoming less relevant and the impact of Google’s move is lessened by this change in the way we look at web analytics.  My answer to this discussion is that “eyeballs” and “pageviews” have never really been the metrics to watch on their own.  However, both can represent achieved objectives in the eyes of many businesses, and this can’t be ignored.

For example, due to the powerful downturn in the global economy, in late 2008 and 2009 many businesses were expanding into new areas of opportunity or contracting to focus on specific areas of business.  In either case, their messaging needed to be modified in order to properly communicate with existing and new customers.  Without properly communicating the change in messaging, these businesses would have a hard time generating leads, sales or other types of conversions.  People read content in many ways online, but many still do it the old fashioned way…they visit the company’s website.  So, in order to tell if people are effectively browsing your new content/messaging, a proper view of your website activity (analytics) is necessary.  It may not be eyeballs or pageviews, but your analytics application should give you the ability to view the equivalent.

Businesses that seek B2B lead conversions as their primary object also need to watch web activity.  Many businesses with long lead, or long sales cycles need to understand web user behavior better than fast converting products or services. Various important questions should be answered by your web analytics operation, including the following: What content are visitors looking at prior to conversion?  What content are they viewing and not converting?  Where are the breaks in my conversion funnel?

Once these and other questions are answered, the right reporting structure will give you the tools to optimize your web assets that will ultimately increase conversions.  So, don’t dismiss the importance of analyzing web activity.  It is likely more critical than you may think.

Kevin

A few weeks ago I received an email from the Google Blogger folks that they will no longer support the ftp version beginning sometime in March.  Unfortunately I had 4 Blogger services running.  While I was a little bothered by this abandonment, I wanted to move over to a better platform anyway.  Wordpress was the most appealing choice.

I needed a little advice on migrating and I posted the question on LinkedIn.  The generous responses were quick and concise.  It turns out that Wordpress has an import feature…awesome!  I was excited to get moving, but this domain was hosted on a friend’s server which was a bit bare bones, without all the bells and whistles you get from new hosting services.  It has been there for about 10 or more years, but I needed more control.  So, I setup an account with a new hosting provider and moved my files over.  Then we changed the dns and all was ready to begin.

The new hosting provider made it easy to install WordPress.  A couple of clicks and I was working in the admin.  I spend an hour or so looking for a theme I liked and voila, we were in business.  Moments later I find the import function in WP and that process began.  Unfortunately, it didn’t work.  I was able to make the connection to blogger, but received a generic message that “nothing was imported”.  Frustrated, I tried this a few different ways still with no luck.

I decided to manually pull the content and post them in the new app.  On this blog it was easy since there are only a few posts.  However, I have hundreds of posts on my other blogs and will NOT be copying everything over manually.  I will need to investigate an alternative that helps ease this process.

Once the content was uploaded I made some changes to the templates and added a few widgets and we were done…almost.  Now I had two blogs running with the same content and that would not be good.  My hosting provider offers a redirect function from control panel.  All I had to do was setup redirects for all the pages and we were done.  Well, the redirect function did not work either.  There might have just been a delay, but either way I was not seeing the results I expected.  That meant I needed to edit the .htaccess file and manually plug in each redirect.  This would include the actual post pages and any other page indexed by the search engines.  A little time consuming, but not a huge problem either.

I then added a few more pages and some ads and the job was complete.  Overall, it took about 10 hours to complete, including time spent choosing a theme/template and tweaking the layout.  Another 3 – 5 hours should be enough to make the additional changes I would like.  I’m happy with the results.

So there you have it.  A small blogger ftp account converted to WordPress manually.  Now I have to tackle the larger blogs!

Kevin

Well, we just opened up the alpha version of Zingby and I am very happy about the progress. It was only four months ago that this idea was born and we’ve all been working hard on it to make it happen. The concept is based on professional social networking in China with a twist of collaboration. The networking aspects are round one, so that is where we are today. You will see additional exciting new features coming in the next couple of months.

The in-line Google translate feature is being tested on the website. So far, it works fairly well. You can still get around the website if your Chinese isn’t very good. We do plan to have multiple language versions, but the method of delivering that will probably be a combination of automated and manual translation.

So, take a look, get registered and feel free to send me an invite to network.

(This post is a little bit of self promotion about Twing.com, the product I currently GM)

So, Google is now allowing users to search across forums outside the Google Groups platform. When we started to build the vision of Twing back in late 2006, one of the questions that arose during the business validation and competitive analysis processes was “If Google entered the market, what would happen to Twing?”. Of course, when you consider an 800 lb. gorilla like Google entering your space, there is always pause.

However, while your business could be greatly damaged by such a situation, there is also opportunity. One of the challenges we faced at Twing was mainstream awareness of “cross forum search”. Yes, it is true that more than 25% of the U.S. internet population uses online discussion forums. However, mainstream awareness about the benefits of this content is limited. Users tend to not understand the differences between different collection types.

In our case the comparison is simply between standard web results and discussion content found in forums. Online forum content is also very different from blogs (in their current mainstream form). We refer to forums as places where many to many discussions take place, or groups speaking amongst themselves. Blogs are usually individuals or entities that post broadcasts to other users. Blog comments can be referred to as discussions of sorts, but they are not the same as forums, in general.

Back to the point. Since awareness about our benefits was always a challenge, we viewed an entry from a major player (Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, Ask) as an opportunity to generate awareness. For example, if they implemented functionality that replicated ours, they would drive mainstream users to the product. Those (now converted believers in forum content) are possible users of Twing.

Oh, and there is one other reason it’s not all bad Google is getting into our space. It helps justify our belief that this is a growing opportunity, not something of the past.

Now that you have a little insight into our positive way of thinking at Twing, I need to get back to figuring out how to battle the fully armed cruiser on my tail doing 40 knots! (Thanks for the analogy Scott)

Anyway, since you read all the way through this blog post (thank you), have a look at Twing if you are interested in searching forums and online discussions. We think we have done a pretty good job.

Kevin Shea