OX2 Web Analytics blog

The Web Analytics Association elections are getting closer and the list of nominees has been published.  As I’m sure that people like Jim and Avinash will pass this democratic exercise, I wanted to publicly support Vicky Brock as candidate to the Board.

Vicky has been one of the most active European members of the WAA since its creation and I strongly think that she will be a great Director at the WAA.  You will find here after a quick interview that I did with her to support her candidacy:

Could you tell a bit about yourself to those who don’t know you yet in the Industry?
Absolutely! I’m based in Scotland slightly more often than I’m based in airports. People may have met me at eMetrics or IMC, or via some of the WAA Basecamp workshops.

My passions are learning new stuff, blogging and gardening (not necessarily in that order).

I’m from a direct marketing and research background. So as a result, I originally found myself on the web analytics path because I was the person in the company who knew how to calculate ROI, knew what conversion meant and most important of all could make pretty graphs in Excel (always handy!).

When and why did you started doing Web Analytics?
As I say, I’m a bit of an Industry old grandma. Around about 1998/1999 I was working for the company that managed HP’s European Websites. The client started asking us tough questions about whether anyone was looking at the websites they were paying so much for. Then they started asking what these people were looking at. Was it driving business? And over the years the questions got tougher and tougher.

I worked with HP as we made the first toe-dips into log file analysis, then through a Europe wide implementation of page tagging, then another one and all the time I learned on the job and I hope shared that learning back into HP and my colleagues.

I think it took a few years to even know I was doing web analytics, because always it was driven by a desire to solve a puzzle and understand these invisible web sites visitors. I was so happy when the WAA was formed because it was reassurance I wasn’t alone!

Since then I’ve worked with many other clients, particularly the public sector and travel sector, but for me web analytics continues to be about great questions and understanding the behaviour of human beings, far more than it is about tools.

You’ve been very active in the WAA since its creation, could you explain the main achievements that you have accomplished for the WAA
It think my main achievements have been in education and international community building. I contributed to the UBC course and have recently developed a series of web measurement and e-marketing courses for a Scottish university. http://www.cpd.uhi.ac.uk/cpd/module/13/emarketing
I’ve delivered sold out WAA Basecamp training workshops and informal WAA workshops to one man and his dog on snowy nights in Scotland.

As a member of the International committee, I’ve tried to help with the massive task which is the bringing together and mutual support and development of WAA members outside of the US, where people face very different challenges (including poor awareness, fragmentation and isolation). I’ve undertaken events and activity myself in the UK and met with (and hopefully assisted) those trying to co-ordinate activity in their own domestic markets.

Increasingly I am trying to combine those elements of education and community by delivering web analytics understanding into new groups, such as market researchers and e-marketers.

What will be your main goals? As a member of the WAA what should I expect from you in the Board?
My primary interest is in the people working in (and impacted by) web analytics and in the successful and ethical transfer of our skills into business impacts. I am not necessarily your girl for definitions and tool related issues – where I hope to be useful is in the support and development of the people who are using the tools and trying to make decisions based on them.

I have become more and more convinced that the future success of web analytics depends on us not fencing ourselves into a corner, but in being embraced by the wider business intelligence, research and media communities. I believe we have much work to do (some still at a fairly fundamental level) to educate ourselves (and the members of the wider research/intelligence industries) not just in web analytics, but how that fits with bigger business/customer information needs.

I would like to foster a closer relationship between BI/research and web analytics because I believe it is in all partys’ interest. That involves driving the WAA education and advocacy agenda and ensuring that this occurs in an international context.

Where do you see the WAA in the next years?
I would like to see the WAA become the intelligence/research standard for best practice, best ethics (when it comes to respect of personal data and privacy) and the best people. In the way that market researchers speak with pride of MRS (market research society) membership and the MRS code of practice, I would like to see web analysts do the same with the WAA.