Online Marketing Trends

Huray! Today I received an email from Helen from the Visual Sciences education department telling me I passed the Visual Site Certified Analyst exam. So as of now I’m Visual Site Certified Analyst

The exam wasn’t a giveaway as I wrote in my other post so I’m delighted to hear that I gave the right answer on most of the questions. We’re still not able to work with the product from the office but I’m sure Ruud will arrange this asap.

This Google Analytics tool, built by Nicolas from Belgium, shows Google Reports in a handy desktop tool. It uses it’s own custom API to interact with Google and nearly implements all features of Analytics.

Nico currently works on the final release of the Reporting Suite, stay up to date by visiting his website and for more screenshots, which also has a cool Google Analytics widget available for download.

To install this Google Analytics Reporting Suite, follow these two steps:

Step 1: Install Adobe AIR
Step 2: Install Google Analytics Reporting suite

HBX Analytics 

I have had some busy weeks lately. Last week Fulton Yancy from Visual Sciences visited our office for a HBX Analytics training. Fulton Yancey has previously worked for WebTrends and since we work with the WebTrends software extensively he has been able to give us a good understanding of the differences between HBX Analytics and WebTrends. It actually made me forgive the fact that HBX Analytics is an ASP based service instead of hosted-yourself.

Visual Sciences 

This week my colleague and I flew to London to have a Visual Sciences training for Visual Site at the EMEA Partner Certification days. This training was our first real handson experience with the software where we could actually work with it. Our first experience was at the partner day in Hoofddorp last May. We absolutely love the products, it is such an high level analytics tool you just have to have it when you see it. After the 3 days of Visual Sciences brainwashing After the training we did an examination which was quite demanding actually.

Google AdWords

My Qualified Google AdWords Professional certification is about to expire in November. That means that I will have to re-examinate soon. Actually since iMETRIX saw the light two weeks ago this couldn’t be a better moment to browse through all new features that have been added to Google AdWords over the past two years. Some things that come in mind are advertising on Google Maps, mobile ads, the AdWords editor software, Website Optimizer, Google Analytics etc. etc. I can imagine a lot of people who are not using Google AdWords every day will get lost somewhere and won’t be able to get all out of the system.

Certificate in Digital Marketing

In one of my previous posts I mentioned the digital marketing plan I had to make as my first assigment for the IDM Certificate in Digital Marketing certification. I have been working hard for it but managed to output a digital marketing plan on time and actually I was happy with the result. Last Friday I received my mark and I’m happy to tell that I passed this first assigment. YAY!!!

WebTrends just released an updated version of the recently released WebTrends Anaytics 8.1 / Marketing Lab 2.0. This updated version has been released under the names WebTrends Analytics 8.1a / Marketing Lab 2.0a.

It seems that this version includes only some little bugfixes and language additions/completions.

• This document lists all enhancements in WebTrends 8.1a
• This document lists all bugfixes in WebTrends 8.1a

The new version can be downloaded from WebTrends FTP site.

Today WebTrends announced their “Move to ML2″ program through which they are offering Visual Sciences’ HBX Analytics customers to migrate to WebTrends Marketing Lab 2. They will give current HBX Analytics customers an licence credit of up to 100%.

It’s interesting to read why WebTrends offers this program. As they state in their press release, it is targeted to those “who may be uncertain about future support for their existing investment”. Maybe WebTrends suggests Visual Sciences will drop support for HBX Analytics since their tool Visual Site is much more comprehensive. Or could it be that WebTrends responds on reports that Visual Sciences settled an patent litigation with NetRatings Inc?

Read the press release: WebTrends Invites HBX Analytics Customers to Move to WebTrends Marketing Lab 2

WebTrends just published their latest offering, WebTrends 8.1 at their FTP server. I have yet to explore the new functionality but at first sight it looks okay. It will take a while to get used to the restyled interface but that is a matter of time. I do think it will need some further tweaks to really work out but the begin is there.

The good news is, I had no problems at all upgrading my 8.0d installation to 8.1! I will be on the road tomorrow to get a new WebTrends customer on the road but I’m sure I will have time later this week to give you screenshots and samples from rhe new WebTrends interface.

Today I was with one of our customers for a second day of WebTrends training. This particular customer manages a governmental site with the goal to inform about social topics. The training would be about using WebTrends and understanding reports. The first day we used to help them understand the tool and the basics, the second day would focus on measuring effectiveness of campaigns.

We skipped back and forward to all kind of topics,  starting with explaining topic one and ending with something completely different. Tiring but it keeps my job interesting

Deciding whether your site is doing okay or not is easy for ecommerce sites as sales and conversion are easy to measure. With content based sites it’s less easy to know whether your Visitors are feeling happy with your offering. One of the discussions we had was about Visit Duration being a metric to use as one telling whether your content or campaign is successful.

If your visitors spend an average of 10 minutes on your site, does that mean your site is optimal?

If he was on your site for 10 minutes it could mean that he is searching for the information he needs, not knowing where to find it because of -for instance- suboptimal navigation or malfunctioning internal search. On the contrary it could mean that he sees so many topics he just can’t get enough of reading all information provided.

But what if the Visit Duration would be only 10 seconds, would that be bad? With current attention span anything above 3 seconds is just great… it could mean that the information provided wasn’t what he was looking for but it could as well mean that he found the information needed and left the site as a satisfied Visitor. And what if I advertise on Google AdWords and my visitor landed at my landing page and flew away without browsing other topics. Would that be bad? NO! It most likely tells you that your landing page is perfect, the visitor has been informed.

I advised the customer to define Key Information Pages, what are the pages your organization makes writes to inform the public. Get them tagged being a KIP and see what part of the visitors saw a KIP and who didn’t. This way you get a very straight forward report; those who were informed and those who were not.

Lars Johansson from Webanalytics.info has enhanced his weblog with an online chat module where you can chat with web analytics experts from all over the world. Be sure to check it out and chat with us!

WebTrends just mailed inviting its users to watch a webcast about the new WebTrends 8.1, which will be announced oficially July 31st. Take 5 minutes to let WebTrends show off their new offering.

In early August, WebTrends Marketing Lab 2 will be available, including the new WebTrends Analytics (v8.1)! What does that mean to you? For one thing, you’ll see a streamlined new interface, and experience some great new features.There’s something new for everyone, so take a look at what you can expect in the new WebTrends Analytics.

  Watch the 5 minute webcast 

For Business Analysts

• Quickly answer questions and share information about your website
• Gain adoption across the organization
• View side-by-side reports to quickly compare results

For Business Users

• Schedule push delivery or pull key performance metrics into corporate scorecards or other solutions within your enterprise
• Enhance export delivery using FTP or pull data with WebTrends Visitor 360 Analytics Data Service

For Administrators

• Administration console enhancements make it easier to search for, define and organize reports
• Enhanced auditing ensures you can quickly identify changes made to things such as reports or profiles

 Watch the 5 minute webcast

You’ve been reading about it for some time, Microsoft Gatineau, the new free Web Analytics tool from Microsoft and now the first screenshots have been made public by David Naylor.

It’s believed that everyone who has seen Gatineau (a city in western Quebec) is still under NDA but that did not force David to post an article complete with screenshots. Gatineau is based on technology from DeepMetrix, an analytics company that was acquired last year. DeepMetrix was based in Gatineau for a number of years. As usual Microsoft works with code names, so Gatineau won’t be the the name the product will have when it is released.

In this screenshot you see Gatineau’s pages report. Personally I think the 3D effect doesn’t add anything to the data. It’s ‘eye-candy’ which does not amke it easier to analyze the data.

Funnel Reporting development doesn’t seem to be finished yet, with 187% of incomming visits exit the page. Let’s assume that data used for this screenshot wasn’t manipulated yet

One of the strenghts and big differences to Google Analytics will be Gatineau’s ability to show you demographic information. Microsoft has a lot of data from their online services like Hotmail, Live, MSN, Spaces and will be able to correlate this with your web traffic. As always, especially with Microsoft, the question is if you can really trust this information.

Let’s just wait until Microsoft Gatineau goes live, I can’t wait to try it.