Ceux qui connaissent OX2 connaissent du même coup notre positionnement indépendant vis-à-vis des éditeurs de solutions Web Analytics ainsi que notre code d’éthique. Nous avons également une vision qui se rapproche de leaders d’opinion comme Eric Peterson ou Avinash Kaushik. Eric vous dira que les web analytics, c’est difficile. Les éditeurs de solutions vous diront: “grâce à nos outils, les web analytics c’est facile.” Ces deux approches sont valides, avec réserves car il existe une troisième voie: les web analytics constituent une culture à part entière. Et au vu de plusieurs problèmes symptômatiques de l’état des web analytics en France, je tenais à vous faire part de mes préoccupations.
Last week I was invited to Barcelona to a great WA event: Practitioner Web Analytics 2008. This event gathered most of the Spanish Web Analytics professionals around a 3 days event. It was a great success based on the feed-back published already in some blogs (Javier & Gemma). For me it was a very special occasion as I’m Spaniard and this was the first opportunity I had to address live a Spanish audience in Spanish
But my attendance had also a hidden agenda. I attended this event also as WAA’s Co-chair of the International Committee and my will was to try to unite the efforts of the Association in Spain. As you might know in Spain there is a national WA association (AEAW) that is not related to the WAA. I strongly believe as I have commented following the EUWAA discussion (Eric, Jim) that the WAA should be united in diversity (act local, think global). We can have regional or local chapters or sister organizations but as our Industry is not mature enough, thus we need to join efforts and don’t split ourselves. Continue reading ‘WAA in Spain a step towards EUWAA? Let’s experiment empowering the local chapters!’
The information just fell in my mailbox as Charlie Holbrech send out a communication to IndexTools partners & Dennis Mortensen blogged about it: IndexTools (Yahoo!) Web Analytics goes FREE!
Boy oh boy Dennis, for a mindblowing (r)evolution, how’s that for a treat?
So, what does this mean? some paperwork for us, IndexTools partners, to accept the Yahoo! agreement in order to continue using the service for our clients, who will now be able to use the service for FREE!
What is Webtrends Visitor360 and what is it good for?
To give you a quick explanation: Webtrends Visitor360 is a web service API that allows interconnection with Webtrends Analytics and Marketing Warehouse On Demand.
For those of you who are not familiar with Webtrends, On Demand means that you use the hosted version of Webtrends and not the software version. This means that the data is on Webtrends servers.
When René barged into our bedroom some 72 hours ago with my laptop in his hand, announcing Greg Drew’s departure from WebTrends, we finally understood why his name had been popping-up on searches to our blog for the last 24 hours in such an abnormal way.
I had thought Greg already looked tired when we briefly met in Washington and attributed that logically to the Road shows that WebTrends was holding, following its August release of the long awaited Marketing Lab² (ML²).
On the other hand, this news also reminded me of some discussions we had back in the spring in San Francisco with some WebTrends folks about the need for a refreshing touch within WebTrends in order to get past the very bad feeling we all shared about the first release of Marketing Lab. All partners we talked to were anxiously waiting – for far too long, I really want to stress that – for a more advanced release that would bring true added value to our existing clients. With ML1, this was clearly not the case.
So, let’s get back to WebTrends news as some more information has been published online regarding it’s top management changes.
The first thing that seems clear now is that Greg Drew and the other three VPs were asked to leave by the Board of WebTrends.
Bruce T. Coleman, who has become the interim CEO, knows WebTrends very well as he was member of the Board since 1998. So even if he has no experience in Web Analytics operations, my feeling is that he understands very well the sector and he has got some ideas for the future.
Coleman has also extensive experience in running technology companies and thus we can expect some changes in the coming months. From public declarations of their CMO Tim Kopp:
”The company has been doing great. We’re driving double-digit growth. But we believe we can continue to do better and the board wanted to make a change to help accelerate growth“.
So the objective is to increase growth and this seems to be the main reason of the management changes. This was corroborated by Bruce Coleman who stated:
Greg Drew, WebTrends’s CEO has now been replaced by Bruce T. Coleman.
Excerpts:
CEO Greg Drew and three other executives at WebTrends Inc. have left the company. Details of their departure remain unclear.
Pictures and biographies of each executive disappeared from the company’s Web site late Wednesday. Calls and a visit to the company, as well as a call to Drew, received no responses.
Drew had headed Portland-based Web analytics firm WebTrends for the past four years, and was part of the management team that took the company out as a separate enterprise from San Jose-based NetIQ Corp. in March 2005.
The WebTrends Web site now lists Bruce T. Coleman as CEO. He is CEO of El Salto Advisors, a consulting firm that provides interim management to computer software and service companies. He was most recently interim CEO of San Diego’s Websense until May 1999 and remains a director of that company.
[...] They speculate that with its market share slipping, WebTrends management wanted to sell the company to its biggest rival, Omniture Inc.
This particular piece of news begs the following questions:
why would two companies that just recently launched major upgrades to their product lines want to be acquired?
why sell to Omniture when WebTrends and Omniture have different views on Web Analytics?
were Visual Sciences and WebTrends in the same race and aware of it?
was Visual Sciences really favored over WebTrends? If so, what were the decisive factors in Omniture’s decision?
I am sure many people in the Web Analytics industry are as sad to see Greg Drew go as we are and wish him the best.
After the acquisition of Visual Sciences, we all wonder how Web Analytics vendors will react. So let’s get back to the different vendors out there and try to take a look at the future.
If we take the latest Forrester Research regarding Web Analytics that Megan Burns wrote a few months ago, which you can download here at Unica’s website, we find the main Web Analytics vendors well represented. Here’s a graph that sums up Megan’s findings:
- All OX2 team that has been working hard on top of their day2day jobs to get this event ready.
- And last but not least, all the participants that showed up. This event was for you and the best gauge that I can think of to measure the successof the event are the feedback forms. Besides one person that complained because it was too much oriented for big compagnies, here are some interesting statistics from the 50 forms that we received back:
100% of respondents found the conference instructive
100% said that the agenda and topics matched their expectations
100% would recommend the event to their friends
Regarding the speakers, the ranking of satisfaction was pretty much as expected: Eric leads with almost everybody stating that he was very good followed by Aurélie, Dave and Stephan. On the vendors side, the ranking of satisfaction placed Omniture followed by WebTrends and then Indextools, Nedstat and Extenseo.
I have to admit that we were really amazed by the feedback forms and the positive emails that we have received since last friday. Here are some of the comments we have received:
“René, Aurélie, just a short note to say congratulations and thank you for today, I thought the audience, content and venue were all first class!”
“Thanks for hosting the event last week. I thought it was very informative and I certainly picked up a few useful insights.”
“I just wanted to congratulate you guys again in setting up this great event. All the people I have spoke to during the day where all enthusiastic about the event and Web Analytics.”
“Thank you for your event, I was really impressed”
“As I just told Rene over the phone. I think it was an amazing event on the level of Emetrics (and I do about 25 shows a year).“
this last comment really made my day, as eMetrics is for me the nirvana of the Web Analytics event.
Thanks again to everybody that came and allowed this event to be a great success.
And yes, see you next year at our third OX2 Web Analytics Day Brussels (It’s going to be difficult to do better I think…).
My conference journey started out on Thursday, when I hooked up with a couple of Belgian clients at the eDay in Rotterdam, before heading back to Brussels together with Eric, after his brief radio interview, where I was lucky enough to play around with his iPhone. To be quite honest, I’m not really an early adopter but if you touch it, believe me, you want one and leaving your credit card at home doesn’t really seem to work
The car ride back home went fast – as we both like to drive fast – and discussed on the way recent evolutions of the Web Analytics industry, including Megan Burns’ latest Forrester wave that had been officially released a couple of days before.
To be quite honest, the night was short and the next day promised to be quite long as I picked up both Dave and Eric to head to the Federation of Enterprises in Brussels in order to have breakfast around 8 am.
When setting up the Web Analytics Day in Brussels, our intention was mainly to get practitioners from major Belgian companies – and picked up a couple of international attendees in the process – in order to allow them to get a full review of what Web Analytics is actually about, looking beyond the pure acquisition of a web analytics tool. As Eric’s Web Analytics is Easy presentation also emphasized, using his RAMP analogy, the first letter stands for Ressources which include both technology as well as people. The other acronyms respectively stand for Analysis, Multivariate testing & Processes. Continue reading ‘Web Analytics Day Brussels: a European shock therapy in Web Analytics’
Ceux qui connaissent OX2 connaissent du même coup notre positionnement indépendant vis-à-vis des éditeurs de solutions Web Analytics ainsi que notre code d’éthique. Nous avons également une vision qui se rapproche de leaders d’opinion comme Eric Peterson ou Avinash Kaushik. Eric vous dira que les web analytics, c’est difficile. Les éditeurs de solutions vous diront: “grâce à nos outils, les web analytics c’est facile.” Ces deux approches sont valides, avec réserves car il existe une troisième voie: les web analytics constituent une culture à part entière. Et au vu de plusieurs problèmes symptômatiques de l’état des web analytics en France, je tenais à vous faire part de mes préoccupations.
The information just fell in my mailbox as Charlie Holbrech send out a communication to IndexTools partners & 
Bruce T. Coleman, who has become the interim CEO, knows WebTrends very well as he was member of the Board since 1998. So even if he has no experience in Web Analytics operations, my feeling is that he understands very well the sector and he has got some ideas for the future.
These are truly fascinating times for Web Analytics.
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