Blackbeaks Blog….All things Analytics

Our esteemed friend Eric Peterson visited us in Finland. He did a lot more than that of course. He talked with all of our staff, did a morning presentation, an afternoon workshop with some of our customers (which went down extremely well) and then went to Stockholm with me to visit Lars and his Web analytics Tuesday event, so named because Eric’s schedule meant we couldn’t do an ordinary WAW (Web Analytics Wednesday).

My take on it all.

1. Web analytics is not easy. It’s not easy to define goals, objectives and actionable metrics, it’s not easy to get accurate data, it’s not easy to work with Web 2.0 rich media and track it effectively, it’s not easy to understand the terms, it’s not easy to get the right staff or resources, it’s not easy to keep good staff from moving on, it’s not easy to measure social media, it’s not easy to get management buy in. Hell if it were all easy I’d be out of a job! But the point is it’s all doable, provided you have a good process in place. RAMP is Eric’s solution to this. Click here to find out more.
2. Lars & Sweden Rock! The web analytics community is a much better place with Lars Johansson (WAA Nordic) in it. This guy deserves a huge amount of credit, firstly for kindly taking on the mantle of WAA coordinator for the Nordic region - the role I used to have when I appointed Lars as country manager for Sweden a year or so ago. My role is now on the International chair as a whole so I am pleased that Lars could take this on. Secondly for arranging from my point of view one of the best events I’ve had the pleaseure to participate in, in the last two years.

Allow me to explain. As a consultant I want to meet the people having problems with web analytics and try to help them. Lars has gathered some of those people and helped ignite their enthusiasm. Rarely have I seen a bunch of business people so engaged, active and interested in the subject of web analytics. In fact if it weren’t for eMetrics Summit’s I would say “Never have I seen a bunch of business people so engaged, active and interested in the subject of web analytics”. It is a testament to the event that when I asked Eric what he thought, he used words like “very proud his idea had turned into something like this” and posted things like “I was blown away” on his blog.

I do a lot of public speaking either presenting, or on panels and if I’m honest I get nervous and twitchy when I have to do it. It’s not easy (that phrase again) when you put yourself out there to be shot at, expressing opinions that could be disagreed with or even just worrying about having a bad hair day! However it’s something I do because I feel it needs to be done if we’re going to get anywhere in the industry. However I thoroughly enjoyed sitting on the panel in Stockholm with Dennis, Ian, Jonas and Eric. The questions from the audience in Sweden were quite simply superb, well thought out and brought up interesting debate from the panelists.

Web Analytics might be hard, but yesterday had me buzzing about the prospects of the industry and my sincere thanks go out to SATAMA, Eric Peterson and Lars Johannson for making this Web Analytics Tuesday a very enjoyable one!