EightBlack.

Here’s a quick access link to an MP3 of a call between Perry Marshall - the undisputed global authority on Google AdWords and Avinash Kaushik, the Analytics Evangelist for Google, plus the author of the best selling book “Web Analytics, An Hour A Day”.

In my humble opinion, 2 smarter guys you could not find. I am lucky to count both as friends and have had the pleasure of working alongside each one. Avinash’s book is a must read and Perry’s Renaissance Club is worth it’s weight in gold. Enjoy.

It still amazes me that Google Analytics is a free service. The cynic in me says that the sheer amount of analytical data that Google are collecting for their own benefit from site owners all around the world must be staggering so no wonder they want to give it away. It’s why the Database Of Intentions argument still exists today.

The challenge for most small to medium enterprises is that while the application might be “free”, the frustration comes with trying to understand the volume of data that’s presented. Where do you start? What numbers do you look at first? (bounce rate, unique visitors, page impressions, time on site etc) How do you learn about what’s important.

As Google matures (it just turned 10), so too must its offerings to the various market segments. There’s a lot of consulting revenue on the table for the search giant and maybe the whole “lets get the user to do all the work himself” is going to have to be re-thought as a strategy.

Most small business operators I know are “time poor”. There’s a lot about the web they still don’t get - and analytics would be at the top of the list. They understand that if they advertise in a Yellow Pages directory, the phone might ring. When the sales rep calls once a year to get them to renew, they’ll instinctively know whether or not they received enough phone calls from the ad (either directly or by yelling around the office to ask for a general consensus).

By the way, you’ve never seen an industry become more defensive about their existence than a physical directory business (like the Yellow Pages). That’s for another time.

My advice to people dipping their toe in the water with analytics is to not worry about what the Google Analytics interface is telling you yet. If you have the internal resource and that person is passionate about the web and the company website, then all well and good. But if you don’t, the all you should concern yourself about is why people leave the site. Not why they stay. Why they leave.

Run an online survey, send out an email questionnaire to past and existing customers, and even consider running one of those often dreaded “exit pops”. There are ways to execute this without becoming totally offensive.

Analytics professionals are in hot demand the world over. I don’t see that trend changing in the near future. Google has done a great job in getting the product out there and who can complain about the price point! But I still think there is an enormous gap between getting a product distributed and having a market actually consume it. If they offered a “free” service and a paid service, not only would Google uncover yet another revenue stream, but also the new found business intelligence would ensure the moat stayed (and widened) around their fortress.

Do you have a question about web analytics that we can help you with?

If you’re looking for a resource, then you will have heard of me talk about this book. An hour a day is all it takes.

If you haven’t had time to digest Avinash’s video below - let me save you some time. Doesn’t mean you shouldn’t invest the 55 mins to watch it. You should.

But for those “time poor” folk (ie all of us), here’s the crux of the message.

Avinash believes that traditional web analytics is dead. Has no future. He refers to Web Analytics 2.0. And it’s not simply just his way of jumping on the whole 2.0 euphoria.

“Hard core” e-commerce sites as he likes to refer to them as, need to take the time to understand “the intent of the visitor”. The analytics data that any tool collects is virtually useless without customer insight. And it makes sense.

Here’s the 3 most important questions to ask any visitor to your website:

1. Why Are You Here?
2. Were You Able To Complete Your Task (ie what you came to do)?
3. If You Were Not Able To Complete It, Why Not?

The analysis of these open ended text based responses will be far more beneficial to you than gigabytes of simple clickstream data.

You might grapple with creating an exit survey or using a survey tool of any kind, but you owe it to yourself to test it. Extract a sample from your database that will provide statistical relevance. There are great survey tools out there - ASK Database, Survey Monkey etc. All cheap to use. The findings however might just be priceless.

Here’s a video I strongly encourage you to take the time to view. Grab a glass of wine, shut the door to your home office, threaten to flush the kids Nintendo DS down the toilet. Just ensure you have some peace and quiet.

The content is important because it’s about the critical nature of web analytics. And it features Avinash Kaushik, probably best known as the author of “Web Analytics, An Hour A Day” and also the Analytics Evangelist for a little search outfit based in Mountain View, California.

This video is part of the “Authors@Google” series and was taken at the Googleplex. In front of a lot of “Googlers”. And it’s no mean feat to hold a couple of hundred very smart search folks attention for an hour.

We rate his book so highly that we give a copy to all our clients.

And we rate Avinash so highly that we pleaded with him to do some consulting work with us. Which he did. And still does.

If you missed the interview I did with Avinash, you’ll find it here.

To me, the crux of web analytics is understanding “the conversation” that takes place at your website. Not “what” happened - that’s the easy part. But “why” it happened.

If you have a website that’s responsible to shareholders, or more importantly, responsible for putting food on a table and paying bills, then web analytics should keep you awake at night.

And the best part about it - getting started is relatively quick and easy. And free. Google Analytics is the best place to start…take the tour right here.

Our push into Web Analytics is here. It’s been a busy few months, with Omniture Certification, the engagement of Michelle Farr to head up our Analytics Practice and our ever trusting clients who have let us push into this space with a great deal of encouragement.

Our focus on the blog (or rather “my” focus) will also change. More on search and analytics. Less on everything else.

And my wholehearted thanks to Avinash for providing the impetus to jump into the future of the web.

I was reviewing my notes from the Omniture Summit in Sydney last week. The Omniture folks put on a good show. Man, is this a company that’s clearly under the pump. They’ve got what everyone wants, but not enough people or resource to help sell it, install it and service it.

It’s probably a good problem to have.

Anyway, Paul Phillips, Omniture’s VP of Behavioural Targeting impressed me greatly. He obviously impressed the senior management and board at Omniture too, because they acquired his company - Touch Clarity a little while back.

One of Paul’s slides stood out more than any other.

He references this:

“There’s a large gap in off-site and on-site spending”.

Meaning, most commercial website owners invest heavily in the following -

• Email
• SEO
• SEM
• Affiliate Marketing
• Banner Ads
• Call Centre
• CRM
• etc

But what they dont spend much on at all is actually the area that needs it most - on site. For example, in the area of analytics or registration.

This line in Avinash’s book keeps ringing in my head - “No matter how much your torture you website data, all the tools will only ever tell you WHAT happened, and not WHY it happened”.

And I think thats why we find it difficult regarding the area of on-site spend. Because understanding the “why” is the most difficult. Its easy to get our heads around SEO, SEM, Affiliate marketing, banner ads etc. All we do is get our agency to fill out insertion orders and away we go.

There needs to be a better balance in what we spend off-site and what we spend on-site. Some folks have started to work this out and its those organisations who are powering the tremendous growth of business optimisation companies such as Omniture.

Paul Phillips is one clever bastard. And someone definitely worth talking to. I’ll put in a request to talk with him and we’ll see what happens.

If you get the opportunity to make it to an Omniture Summit, I strongly recommend it.

This event is a lot bigger than I first thought. And the attendee numbers around the 500+ mark. Thats in Sydney alone.

We just returned from Omniture in Utah, where we completed our Implementation Certification. It will be interesting to see how the senior team from Omniture perform in front of an Aussie audience.

More importantly, there’s a featured case study in the travel sector, with a company called “travel.com.au”. Now that should be interesting, given we have a client in the same space.

In my mind, web analytics is the future of the web. And so few people understand it. Its the single reason that we are determined to lead in this space and why were investing heavily in our people and training.

Omniture is not the only web analytics company in the space. But its got one thing that a lot of its competitors dont.

Momentum. And great people.

I’m going to interview Josh James, Omnitures CEO and founder in the next week or so. Should be an interesting chat. Stay tuned.

I don’t know about you, but the year seems to be picking up pace, not slowing down.

David Galt, our Client Services Manager starts a new career with our client Webjet in a week or two. This is an outcome you only ever hear about - not actually witness. More on this later. I couldn’t be happier for Dave. I’m a little stressed about how we’ll try and “replace” him, but we’ll cope. Sort of. You know the management saying that “no one is indispensible”. Thats mostly true and I subscribe to it. But Dave comes close to proving this statement to be a complete lie, in the regard that he just may be nearly impossible to replace.

We’re looking for a Junior Account Manager - the position overview is here.

And we’ve opened offices in London and San Francisco this past quarter.

We also are pushing hard into the web analytics space, with concurrent training with 2 of the world’s most respected platforms continuing (with Google and Omniture), resulting in certification for our team.

I’m hoping to announce the Head of Analytics for Eight Black in a week or so. Stay tuned.

Travel schedule - for those who are interested in where our (my) focus is for the remainder of the year.

1. Seth Godin’s small gathering in New York, September 6. More here.

2. Web 2.0 Summit - San Francisco, October 17-19. I’m delighted that I’ve been accepted to attend Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco. Like we did for Web 2.0 Expo earlier this year, I’ll be blogging live from the event. Man, was this a tough gig to gain entry to. Attendance by invite only.

3. Blog World Expo - Las Vegas, Nov 8-9. One of the most important relationships we’ve developed in 2007 is with Dave Taylor. Dave and I spent a half a day together recently and Blog World Expo is his baby. I’m glad I introduced Avinash Kaushik to Dave, as Avinash is now a part of the speaking line-up at Blog World. This should be a great event - 5000+ attendees expected and some of the most serious bloggers on the planet in attendance.

I’m doing my best to concentrate and read every word of Avinash’s new book. The content is revolutionary. And in my mind, critical to future success on the web. If you’re serious that is.

Probably the other thing thats compounding my frustration this week is that we’ve got a team in Utah at the moment finishing our Omniture web analytics certification.

I’ve got analytics up the wazoo. My head hurts.

And to top it all off, Ben, our technical lead has got me all fired up about the new iPhone. Here’s a picture of us (taken with the iPhone) at a microbrewery in Salt Lake City. And its also proof that, despite what you may have heard about Utah being full of people who believe that alcohol is the work of the devil, it is possible to find (and consume) a decent beer.

Actually, would you believe the beer we’re drinking is actually called a “Polygamy Porter” and the tag line under the beer is “Why have just one…?”.

Indeed.

Back to my point of this post. One of the nuggets to come out of the first 20 pages of “An Hour A Day” is this question, “Why Does Your Website Exist?”

Think about it for a moment. Think long and hard. Can you answer this question? I reckon we’ve got clients who would argue for hours about this and still not be able to agree or come up with an answer. They’d then hire a Big 6 accounting firm to come in for 12 months and do a SWOT analysis. Or something like that.

I know why this blog exists.

But do you know why YOUR website exists?

And here’s the other gem.

“But no matter what tool you use, the best that all this data will help you understand is what happened. It cannot, no matter how much you torture the data, tell you why it happened”.

And thats why I think Avinash has hit one out of the park so to speak with his book. Most people focus on their raw website numbers. I know we have been guilty of this. And so have our clients.

But the message is clear. Knowing why something occurs on your site or why a customer does what he does is far more important than really knowing “the what”. And if you can combine the 2, then the intelligence is even more powerful.

We recieved our shipment of Avinashs’ new book a few weeks ago. In case you missed it, Googles Analytics Evangelist, Avinash Kaushik has just released “Web Analytics, An Hour A Day”.

Seth Godin reckons everyone should read it. I agree.

We sent copies of the book to all our clients.

Here’s the critical thing.

“Web Analytics is more than clickstream, more than a simple conversion rate and more than just numbers”.

In my opinion, web analytics will be the single most important issue facing ecommerce sites. Thats why we’re making a big investment with Google Analytics and Omniture and today we head to the US to complete our Omniture Certification.

By the end of the week, we’ll be the 4th company in Australia with Omniture implementation credentials, which surprises me.

Our aim is to have completed Google’s Analytics certification by the end of the year. It means training our team at Mountain View, which I shouldn’t have trouble selling to our techno-geeks. Its a bit like saying to an alcoholic would they like to spend a week in a winery.

Stay tuned. Posting has been light of late but I intend to catch up on some things while on the road.