Web Analytics India Blog

The First in the series of Omniture summit Coverage, it was great to see the preview of Omniture Site Catalyst 14.0 Version.  

Omniture SiteCatalyst  version 14.0 is expected to be launched and available in beta by March 04 midnight! The preview was great! so dont forget to contact your account manager to get access to the new version. Iam yet to check all the features, but “the cosmetic look” looks good

Omniture 14.0 comes with various updates, so here’s a preview of what’s new. 

1. A complete Redesign of User Interface
   • Navigation Change
   • Re – Organization of the Conversion, Traffic, and Path Reports
   • Easier Report Suite Selection.
   • With many more added features…
2. Report Publshing and Distribution, Some of the main features are
   • Report-suite level calculated metrics, giving all users access to the same KPIs ( This was so much needed, earlier version you had to create calculated metrics for each report suites)
   • Boardroom-ready downloaded reports in PDF, Excel, Word and HTML formats
   • Drag-and-drop dashboard organization
   • Lockable dates, to prevent rolling periods in scheduled reports
   • Simplified workflow for downloading and scheduling reports, creating bookmarks, and setting up alerts
3. Video Tracking: The “All New” feature in Omniture 14.0 is tracking Video content on your site, a menu created with supported metrics. Features include.
   • Native support for Flash and Flex, along with Windows Media Player, QuickTime and RealPlayer
   • Only one server call per video
   • Nine new video reports
   • Video engagement or milestone tracking built into reports
   • Find sweet-spots for ad placement by seeing the most viewed sections of video
4. ExcelClient Workbook Distribution: allows you to upload your analysis into SiteCatalyst, automating the process of populating data blocks and delivering the updated workbook to anyone, regardless of whether they have the ExcelClient installed.
   • Schedule regular delivery of any Excel workbook
   • Use Publishing Lists to pull data from thousands of report suites and send each resulting workbook to any number of recipients.
5. Web Services Report API: Another great feature! More in detail after the session day after. Web Services API gives you programmatic access to real-time reporting, anytime.
   • Build tools to query SiteCatalyst reports, anytime
   • Utilize SOAP standards for fast development
   • All reports that support Data Extract or ExcelClient can be accessed
6. ActionSource for AS3: Omniture 14.0 helps native tracking support for Flex 2 and Flash 9 applications, Features Include
   • Track Flash video from within the Flash player with four function calls
   • Native support for Adobe Flex 2 and Flash 9
   • Class-based implementation, allowing for easier, faster deployment

Have you checked out the Version 14.0 ? If not what do you feel about the features above ?, pen down your views via comments.

Anil

June Dershewitz  wrote a article on Web Analytics association site, The “title” caught my attention and when i read that i could probably relate to my early days in web analytics. Tittled Top 10 Things I Wish I Knew When I Started in Web Analytics .

Here’s the three things which probably i can relate to most!

Excerpts from the Article

• Ahem, what is this thing you call a “Visit”? Know your standard web metric definitions by heart, and be able to recite them concisely for people who ask. They will ask.
• Dirty, dirty, dirty. Numbers won’t match, they won’t add up, they won’t make sense, sometimes they won’t even exist. Know how much dirt you’re willing to live with, then accept it and move on.
• You will learn to love the query string. You will come to see it as a beautiful haiku. You will know it backwards and forwards. You will repeatedly explain its usage to people who need to append campaign codes to URLs.

So if your a beginner read the Article, and use it as a things you need to be aware off and which you might encounter in your web analytics career path.

And ah! let us know your experience in your early days

Anil  

Judah over at Web Analytics Demystified wrote about an Team Structure for Web Analytics, and i agree with his thoughts on web analytics team structure. Many articles and best practices guide for Web Analytics governance and forming a new team, but at the end of the day it depends on Company size, Structure , Process, Priorities, and of course budget.

Here’s in brief of what Judah talks about how a web analytics team should look

• An Executive Sponsor: A Hippo (Highest Paid Person in the Organisation)
• A Web Analyst: This person is most likely you. You may be an MBA, a techie, a marketer, an IT person, or someone who was promoted into the position
• A Technology Expert: A computer science graduate! or web Technologist

Here’s also more about related topic, this time written by Eric Peterson over his blog. This is a 2 part series on Web Analytics Communication Strategies.

In the Part 1, Eric speaks about first three steps

1. Defining Business Objectives
2. Define who owns analytics at your company
3. Define your analytics organizational structure

In Part 2, following is covered:

1. Determining Your Key Performance Indicators and Critical Factors
2. Determine How you will Deliver Analysis
3. Putting all your information together

Dennis Mortensen recently did a presentation on how to decide if a metric qualifies as a KPI – Key performance indicator.

Here’s an overview of what he speaks about

• How does one decide if a Metric Qualifies as a Key Performance Indicator? ..and if so, what are the characteristics of an excellent online marketing KPI?
• 7 KPI Characterstics
• Examples

[flash http://static.slideshare.net/swf/ssplayer2.swf?doc=the-difference-between-a-kpi-and-a-metric-1202240162965806-3]

Adding more options to analytics world, Google recently released Urchin software in beta! It’s however a hosted solution and available for download for a 90 day free trial period.

Urchin Software from Google is a web analytics product similar in scope to Google Analytics, except you install and manage the software on your own servers.

Why use Urchin Software?

Urchin is suitable for organizations that have content behind a security firewall or have other restrictions that prevent them from using the Google Analytics service. Urchin is also useful for those who want to perform ad-hoc historical log processing, who want to store their web analytics on local servers, and those requiring third-party data audits. Urchin Software from Google features the following upgrades from Urchin 5, among many others:

• More accurate geo-identification of visitors
• Cross-segmentation options similar to Google Analytics
• E-commerce and campaign tracking included (no longer requiring additional modules)
• Vastly improved embedded scheduler to more easily manage processing and re-processing jobs
• Improved user interface
• More robust log processing engine

Read more about Urchin Software

• Urchin Features
• Urchin Support
• Urchin Download

So if you have a website, it sure i worth installing and play around! and understand how it works.