Advanced Web Metrics

As some of you may be aware, I was the first member of the EMEA analytics team to join Google back in October 2005. That feels like a decade ago, both in time, but also in terms of our positioning within the company - remember the GA invite code system?

Last Friday after two and a half years based at the London office, I hung up my Googlepex pass and switched off my environmentally un-friendly lava lamp for the last time. I leave behind a well established team of dedicated product experts and a third-party Partner network to help. As you may suspect following the recent book launch, I will very much remain in the industry and continue to discuss web analytics (with only a slight bias for Google as usual!) both here on the blog and at industry events/conferences.

So what’s next for Brian Clifton?

FACT: The vast majority of web content is made up of poorly optimised websites. By that I mean poorly optimised for visibility (visitors can’t find you via the search engines) and poorly optimised for the user experience (leading to low conversion rates). These two are closely related and web analytics is the key to unlock the potential of both.

Since my first days on the web in the early nineties, I have wanted to do something about that! In fact I have always been fanatical about ergonomics. Therefore I am happy to announce that I am now the Senior Strategist for Omega Digital Media - a company specialising in search integration and conversion marketing and the company I originally founded back in 1997. They have been an official analytics partner for Google for many years (that’s how I got recruited by Google!), so the connection continues. I will be focusing my efforts on providing the service needed to help clients grow their business by making web analytics central to their strategy.

Also expect further publications from me (think Urchin - where my association with the product began in 2003), SEM research and conferences/events where you will hear me discussing ideas on web analytics, search integration and multi-variate testing.

Some analytics highs while at Google…

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Last week on April 5th, Google launched Website Optimiser, a free multivariate testing tool. I know it should be spelt Optimizer, but I just can’t bring myself to ruin the English language!

Simply put, multivariate testing is a way of testing the effectiveness of different content combinations on your web pages. By effectiveness I mean the ability to solicit a conversion. For example, suppose you have multiple photographs of a product you sell via your web site. Which one (or combination of several) best achieves the desired effect of converting your visitors into purchasers?

Traditionally you would test one combination at a time. Using Website Optimiser, you simply create a page experiment and host your alternative content at Google. Google then delivers all possible combinations at random to visitors and measures the success (or not) of each combination by integrating with Google Analytics.

Similarly you can try combinations of titles, headlines, buttons, links, colours, paragraphs of text, even entire page redesigns. In effect, Website Optimiser begins to close the loop for web analysts i.e. measure, analyse, test.

Key features of Website Optimiser:

• Multivariate testing tool (full factorial)
• Test up to 8 page sections simultaneously
• Test up to 1000 combinations simultaneously
• Free

Already some of the Google Analytics Authorised Consultants (GAACs) and Website Optimiser Authorised Consultants (WOACs) are doing some very clever things combining the power of WO and GA.

Welcome to Avinash Kaushik who joins the Google Analytics team.

Based at the Goopleplex in Mountain View, Avinash will ”work with Google Marketing and assist them with internal analytics for their marketing programs. I’ll also be working with the Google Analytics team on assignments that span speaking, web analytics education and evolution of the GA tool.”

http://www.kaushik.net/avinash/2007/03/next-stop-wonderland.html

For those that don’t know Avinash, he is one of the industry’s leading evangelists and web analytics bloggers (spending up to 20 hours per week on his blog! ). As Director of Web Research & Analytics at Intuit, he literally built that team from scratch into a world class web analytics outfit.

If you want to catch up with him, Avinash will be with me at eMetrics London 29/30th March. I hope I don’t have to present after him - its a tough act to follow!

Today Gobal Strategies Inc. announced that they have been acquired by Neo@Ogilvy - the Ogilvy Group’s global digital and direct media company (a subsidiary of WPP).

I have come to know Sara, Bill and Motoko (from GSI) quite well in recent months from presenting at the same events - for example, the ‘Converting Visitors into Customers‘ session at SES London. GSI is a pan-global search engine marketing company that has specific expertise in web analytics - “Missed Opportunity Matrix(TM)” and “Shelfspace reports” are common terminolgies from their presentations.

Congratulations to the GSI/Neo team!